Forrester: Conventional wisdom is wrong about Cloud IaaS
From the report extract:
Survey results confirm strong interest in cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) but debunk several stereotypes. Large firms are more interested in cloud IaaS than small firms. Firms are interested in cloud services slightly more than internal cloud, not, as conventional wisdom has it, much less than internal cloud. Firms are equally comfortable with all major workload types in the cloud and are almost as comfortable with production apps as they are with test and development usage. For all vendor strategists, this means focusing on enterprise and SMB both, not leading with SMB, while product vendor strategists also need to develop different messages for enabling internal cloud versus supporting use of external service providers.
I've read the full report and it brings up some interesting thoughts:
- The report stated that only about 1/3 of the participants were "not interested in cloud computing". That means 2/3's are!
- Something is obviously driving these users towards the adoption of Cloud Computing -- my own thoughts about current IT depts and Channel vendors are being proven true - there is clear dissatisfaction among end-user organisations about how IT is currently delivered as well as the associated costs.
- It would seem end-users are much less conservative than expected. Conventional thinking is that enterprises will start with development and test environments in the Cloud and maybe consider production systems in the future. According to this report, that isn't true -- over 1/3 of large and medium sized enterprise companies are ready to put enterprise apps into production in public Cloud environments.
- The Big Switch is happening and both IT departments and the Channel vendors need to adapt and fast -- (disclosure: my own firm ZeroTouch helps both IT depts and IT Service Providers to make these changes)
ZeroTouch IT Ltd
