Cloud: From Playground to Production

Cloud computing is inevitable, and we talk with analysts from the 451 Group about the key trends in cloud computing, the current stage of cloud computing, and differentiations that can set vendors apart from the competition.

William Fellows, VP of research for global cloud computing, sees a perfect storm of three trends at the moment. First is the current economic emphasis on doing more with less, and the beauty of cloud is that organizations can reduce spending on capital equipment without negatively impacting operations. However, this does not mean that cloud will be cheaper for everyone. The second is the consumerization of IT, while the third is the introduction of infrastructure as a service, including virtualization, automation, self-service, and pay-per-use on-demand, which is changing the entire service delivery model, for both external and internal providers. Private cloud computing is on the agenda now, as organizations want to be able to capture the same benefits that public cloud providers have inside their organizations.

Agatha Poon, research manager, emphasizes that when looking at trends, especially for cloud, we have to put it in context of different regions. The state of development in different markets in different regions have different distinctive trends. In the U.S. there has been lot of talking about multi-cloud strategy. But in Asia, it is just the beginning of the game.

As for market maturity, Fellows sees cloud computing today as moving from playground to production, with the focus gradually moving from IT production applications to business production applications to IT as a service. At this transition point, organizations need to mature culturally and organizationally to take advantage of these things.