Cisco says cloud – primarily private cloud – is the key to unlocking new business value
Cloud business is moving into a second wave of adoption, according to a global study commissioned by Cisco. Half (53 per cent) the survey group said they expect cloud to raise their revenues in the next two years – with almost as many (44 per cent) identifying private cloud as their chosen enabler.
The lack of private cloud options could be handicapping cloud business, analyst IDC reports, in its Cisco-sponsored Infobrief, “Don’t Get Left Behind: The Business Benefits of Achieving Greater Cloud Adoption”. Only one per cent of organizations claimed to have optimized cloud strategies in place and 32 per cent admitted they have no cloud strategy at all.
Cisco’s customers would be more interested in the second wave of cloud if it resolved their concerns about security, performance, price, control and data protection, according to its vice president for global cloud and managed services sales, Nick Earle. Cisco’s customer sentiments seem to be reflected in the IDC study, according to Earle, and the interest in private and hybrid clouds would seem to confirm this, with 64 per cent of cloud adopters reportedly considering hybrid cloud.
“Our strategy to build private and hybrid infrastructure is reflected in the new IDC study,” said Earle.
The study identifies five levels of cloud maturity: ad hoc, opportunistic, repeatable, managed and optimized. As the cloud strategy of organizations matures, moving from the lowest level ad hoc clouds to fully developed optimized clouds, ‘dramatic’ business benefits materialise, Cisco contends. It quantifies these benefits as revenue growth of 10.4 per cent, IT cost cutting at 77 per cent, a 99 per cent reduction in the time to lay on IT services and applications, a 72 per cent improvement in meeting service level agreements and a doubling of the IT department’s capacity to invest in new projects.
On a macro economic level the study estimated that ‘mature’ cloud organizations gain an average of $1.6 million in additional revenue for every application run on private or public cloud. They also cut the cost per application by $1.2 million by running them in the cloud.
Cisco said that private cloud will improve resource use, allow projects to run at greater scale and will give faster response times, while providing more control and security.
Though concerns about the complexities of hybrid cloud adoption – workload portability, security, and policy enablement – were reflected study, up to 70 per cent of respondents expect to migrate data between public and private clouds or among multiple cloud providers.