Survey Finds Enterprise IaaS Use Is Becoming Mainstream

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A new survey sponsored by VMware and conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group finds that enterprises are embracing public cloud computing services. Enterprises are moving beyond the testing and development stages and deploying workloads to public IaaS services.

Dave Courbanou from Channelnomics reported, “The most telling finding: 67 percent of midmarket and enterprise companies say they currently run ‘mission-critical workloads’ on IaaS platforms. VMware says this signals a departure from the ‘test and development’ mentality that previously dominated the cloud marketplace, and there’s growing evidence this will be a continuing trend.”

CRN’s Kevin McLaughlin added, “In terms of cloud services, 70 percent of survey respondents are using storage, 58 percent are using on-demand compute and 53 percent are using disaster recovery. The survey also shows that 78 percent of respondents are choosing public cloud IaaS services that are compatible with their own private cloud and data center infrastructure.”

eWeek quoted VMware’s Mathew Lodge who said, “The study demonstrates that IaaS from cloud service providers is seeing broad adoption by mainstream business for business-critical applications and data, moving beyond test and development.” He continued, “As IaaS adoption grows, so does the importance of strong customer service and support as well as the quality of the underlying technology. Compatibility with existing virtualized datacenters and private clouds was also key.”

According to ZDNet’s Rachel King, other key findings in the report included the following:

“Service and support topped the list of criteria for selecting cloud service providers with 80 percent of respondents citing it as ‘important.'”
“Roughly a quarter of the respondents said that total cost of ownership is the single most important criteria when it comes to picking a service provider.”
“78 percent of respondents replied that it is also important that cloud service providers’ infrastructure technologies are compatible with their internal private clouds and virtualized data centers. “
“83 percent of respondents acknowledged that the underlying technology used to deliver IaaS is somewhat important, with nearly half citing it as a very important when considering IaaS.”