Archivo de la categoría: Research
Study Finds Enterprise Cloud Focus Shifting From Adoption to Optimization
Cloudyn together with The Big Data Group has released the latest AWS customer optimization data, reinforcing the positive growth trend expected for the year ahead.
“We set out to evaluate whether the projected 2013 ‘year of cloud optimization’ is on course and discovered that we are well into the public cloud adoption life cycle. In 2011 and 2012 the conversation centered around how and when to move to the cloud. Now it is all about companies looking for efficiencies and cost controls,” commented David Feinleib, Managing Director of The Big Data Group.
The study, based on over 450 selected AWS and Cloudyn customers, highlights a more mature approach to cloud deployments reflected by a deeper understanding of where inefficiencies lurk and how to optimize them. EC2 makes up for 62% of total AWS spend, with more than 50% of customers now using Reserved Instances in their deployment mix. However, On-Demand pricing remains the top choice for most, accounting for 71% of EC2 spend. Even for customers using reservations, there is still opportunity for further efficiency.
For example, Cloudyn’s Unused Reservation Detector has assisted customers in finding a startling 24% of unused reservations. These can be recycled by relocating matching On-Demand instances to the availability zone of the unused reservation.
There is also a shift away from large instance types to medium, where two medium instances cost the same as one large, but can produce 30% more output. However, with the low 8-9% utilization rates of the popular instance types, there is certainly more work to be done on the road to cloud optimization.
Cloudyn and The Big Data Group host a webinar on May 1, 2013 at 9:00 am PT focused on deployment efficiency.
How Common are Private Clouds? How About Enterprise Use of Public Cloud Services?
Joe McKendrick, who covers technology at Forbes, has good good coverage and analysis of a new survey (pdf) just published by Unisphere Research on adoption of cloud technology by corporations:
Close to two-fifths of organizations now run private clouds in one form or another, and one-fourth are using public cloud services in an enterprise capacity. Private clouds are being extended deeper into the organizations that have them — a majority expect to be running most of their workloads in the cloud within the next 12 months, especially Platform as a Service middleware. In addition, close to one-third of public cloud users report they are employing hosted services to run their private clouds for them.
Read the full article.
Survey Says 40 Per Cent of IT Managers Have Suffered a Cloud Outage
According to a survey by Kelton done for TeamQuest, nearly four in ten respondents reported having suffered a cloud outage:
Many survey respondents believe the reported outages could have been prevented. Capacity management is sighted as one way to minimize the risks associated with cloud computing, according to respondents in a survey from Kelton Research, commissioned by TeamQuest Corporation.
Why Apple, Not Dropbox, Amazon or Google Drive, is Dominating Cloud Storage
Apple is dominating the cloud storage wars, followed by Dropbox, Amazon and Google according to Strategy Analytics ‘Cloud Media Services’ survey. Cloud storage is overwhelmingly dominated by music; around 90% of Apple, Amazon and Google’s cloud users store music. Even Dropbox – which has no associated content ecosystem – sees around 45% of its users storing music files. Dropbox’s recent acquisition of Audiogalaxy will add a much needed native music player to the platform in the coming months.
In a recent study of almost 2,300 connected Americans, Strategy Analytics found that 27% have used Apple’s iCloud followed by 17% for Dropbox, 15% for Amazon Cloud Drive and 10% for Google Play (see chart).
Usage of cloud storage is heavily skewed towards younger people, in particular 20-24 year olds, whilst Apple’s service is the only one with more female than male users. Amongst the big four, Google’s is the one most heavily skewed towards males.
“Music is currently the key battleground in the war for cloud domination. Google is tempting users by giving away free storage for 20,000 songs which can be streamed to any Android device, a feature both Amazon and Apple charge annual subscriptions for,” observes Ed Barton, Strategy Analytics’ Director of Digital Media. “However, the growth of video streaming and the desire to access content via a growing range of devices will see services such as the Hollywood-backed digital movie initiative Ultraviolet – currently used by 4% of Americans – increase market share.”
Barton continues, “The cloud’s role in the race to win over consumers’ digital media libraries has evolved from a value added service for digital content purchases to a feature-rich and increasingly device agnostic digital locker for music and movies. Dropbox being used by 1 in 6 Americans shows that an integrated content storefront isn’t essential to build a large user base, however we expect competition to intensify sharply over the coming years.”
Strategy Analytics found that, the big four cloud storage services aside, recognition of other brands was uniformly low. Furthermore 55% of connected Americans have never used a cloud storage service – although, amongst consumers who have used one, one third (33%) had done so in the last week.
“There needs to be considerable investment in evangelizing these services to a potentially willing yet largely oblivious audience,” suggests Barton. “Given the size of bet Hollywood is making with Ultraviolet, this will be essential to their success given a crowded market and widespread apathy. However, more fundamental questions remain – is the use of more than one cloud service going to be too much for consumers to handle and will consolidation in such a fragmented market become inevitable?”
Barton concludes, “Although cloud storage is fast becoming a key pillar of digital platform strategies for the world’s leading device manufacturers and digital content distributors, there’s still a lot of work to do in educating consumers – particularly those over 45. With over half of consumers yet to use any consumer cloud based service, 2013 predictions for the ‘year of the cloud’ seem unrealistic. However given the market influence of the leading players pushing the concept, in particular Apple, Amazon, Google and Ultraviolet, I won’t be surprised to see mainstream adoption and usage spike within the next two to three years in the key US market.”
Do You Know the Top Threats to Cloud Security?
Where computing goes, trouble follows — in the form of hackers, disgruntled employees, and plain old destructive bugs. And as computing is moving to the Cloud (it says so right there in our logo!) that’s where some of the newest threats are emerging.
The Cloud Security Alliance has identified The Notorious Nine, (registration required) the top nine cloud computing threats for 2013.
Data breaches, data loss, account and traffic hijacking, insecure interfaces and APIs, denial of service attacks, malicious insiders, cloud “abuse” (using the power of the cloud to crack passwords), lack of due diligence, and shared technology platforms leading to shared vulnerabilities.
KPMG: Cloud Computing Is Harder, More Expensive Than We Thought
KPMG International’s Cloud Survey reports businesses saying cloud computing challenges are harder and more costly than they originally thought.
Why? Failure to address changes that were needed in:
- Business-process redesign
- IT management capabilities
- Systems integration
- Infrastructure management
- IT “configurations”
GigaOM does a good overview.
Polls: Quarter of US, Third of UK Know What ‘Cloud’ Means
Webfusion, a UK hosting group, polled more than 1,000 respondents in the US to gauge their understanding of ‘cloud’ technology. Of the respondents, almost one third (31.8 per cent) stated that they had no understanding of the term at all, with only 25 per cent claiming to have a clear understanding of Cloud technology. The findings come on the heels of a similar survey conducted in the UK, which revealed that 34 per cent of the British public had a good understanding of ‘cloud’.
Key findings include:
- 25-34 year olds have the best understanding of ‘cloud’, with one third (33.8 per cent) claiming to know what Cloud computing is
- 63 per cent do not recognize Dropbox / iTunes/ Gmail / Hotmail as Cloud services
- 91 per cent do not recognize scalable hosting as ‘Cloud’. This figure stands at 84 per cent in the UK
Commenting on the findings, Thomas Vollrath, CEO of Webfusion’s parent company Host Europe Group, said: “We were surprised at the general lack of cloud knowledge in the UK, but it turns out that we are much more Cloud savvy than our American counterparts, despite the US often being considered as technological innovators. With research indicating that three quarters of US businesses are consciously using some sort of cloud service, with UK adoption standing at 61 per cent, these results are yet more surprising.
“If consumers in the US don’t know what ‘Cloud’ means and have no idea that applications like iTunes are Cloud-based, then perhaps the use of the term should be restricted, at least in consumer circles. The reversal between US and UK consumer and enterprise Cloud knowledge goes to show that the use of the term ‘Cloud’ still remains a business message and should be used as such,” he concluded.
That Time of the Year: Everyone Has a List and Predictions
It’s getting to be the time of year when the “lists of” come out, recalling the best (or worst, depending) of this and that, usually followed by pundit predictions for the coming year. Cloud Computing is no different so this particular form of holiday cheer is starting to appear. We’ll try to find and point to the ones worth spending some time with.
First up: Joe McKendrick at Forbes on “7 Predictions for Cloud Computing in 2013 that Make Perfect Sense“. Notice we’re no longer shackled to the nice round number 10. He found 7 so what’s what he offered us. They range from “More hosted private clouds” to “Cloud as a defining term fades“. I think maybe the most intriguing one was “Cloud and mobile becoming one“.
Read the post for the full list and all his reasoning and details.
Chinese Companies Taking Hybrid Approach to Business Clouds
Taking a hybrid approach that supports traditional and cloud-based IT solutions is key to business cloud adoption in China, according to the Strategy Analytics Business Cloud Strategies (BCS) service report “Chinese Organizations Adopt SaaS and Other Business Clouds.” It describes the extent to which businesses and other organizations in China have embraced a mix of public and private clouds while maintaining traditional on-premise software deployments.
Chinese organizations are moving to cloud computing due to expectations of superior scalability and other benefits. However, the pace of cloud adoption is affected not only by security concerns which represent the top reason for not moving apps to the cloud for every country surveyed but also reliability concerns which is more of a concern in China than in all but one of the other countries surveyed.
“Chinese organizations are investing in moving applications and infrastructure to public and private clouds,” commented Mark Levitt, Director of Business Cloud Strategies research at Strategy Analytics. “However, continued reliance on traditional on-premise solutions for key business workloads due to reliability and security concerns requires cloud service providers and product vendors in China to fully support hybrid cloud and non-cloud environments.”
“Cloud product and service providers that want to be successful in China need to demonstrate how clouds can actually enhance security, reliability and mobility for Chinese organizations,” said Andrew Brown, Director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics.
