Tag Archives: study

Study Reveals The Cloud Does Save Businesses Money

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Despite the hype and claims by large software companies about the miracles of cloud computing, a combined study by Ireland’s National Software Engineering Research Centre (Lero) and NUI Galway has shown that cloud actually results in significant time savings for firms and drives down administrative costs.

The new report claims to offer the first empirical evidence globally of the benefits of cloud computing. Globally, the market for public cloud services is expected to increase by 19pc to US$109bn this year, according to Gartner.

Ed Anderson, Gartner’s cloud forecaster, predicts cloud computing is set to grow a further 100pc to be a US$207bn market by 2016.

“Despite the huge growth in cloud computing, research to date has largely been based on anecdotal evidence,” Dr Kieran Conboy at the Cairnes School of Business in NUI Galway, who is leading the SFI funded Lero research, explained.

“NUIG conducted an in-depth, evidence-based study across a number of Irish-based organisations to see if the perceived benefits stood up.”

Cloud-bursting

As well as supporting previous industry claims of cost and time benefits, the Lero research also found that cloud introduces a positive shift in the way companies interact with external sources, such as customers, and in the way employees communicate with each other. “This has the potential to leverage more innovation and collaboration along a company’s supply chain,” states the report.

A critical finding of the research was that all too often, organisations view adoption in overly simple terms – either they should adopt the technology or not. Conboy commented, “We found too many organisations were making the decision based on an initial ‘go’ or ‘no go’ basis and were failing to realise that various people and parts of that organisation were making different decisions – often with very negative consequences.”

The research found different results between those “who only dip a toe in the water” compared to those who actively promote routine use of cloud and deep integration of the technology with existing organisation activities and systems.

Recognising the need to examine adoption of cloud technology at multiple levels, Dr Lorraine Morgan of NUIG said: “The tech sector has a history of hyping the next big thing. In the case of the cloud, our study suggests that many of the claims stand up.

“In view of this, it is important to explore the barriers to more widespread adoption amongst business and this will be the subject of our follow-up study,” Morgan said.

Author: John Kennedy
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IT spending by SMBs up 15% in first quarter

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Biggest spending is going towards tablets, cloud and virtualization, according to a new study.

Small and medium-sized businesses are spending more money on IT, including adopting tablets, cloud services and virtualization to a greater extent, according to Spiceworks’ State of SMB IT survey.

IT budgets at companies with fewer than 1,000 employees grew 6 percent in the first half of 2012 from the second half of 2011, and 15 percent year-over-year, according to the survey.

The average annual IT budget is currently $152,000, up from $143,000 for the second half of 2011 and the $132,000 reported for the first half of 2011, it said.

Much of the jump in SMB IT spending is due to tablet adoption, the Spiceworks study reveals.

SMBs are spending more on technology across the board, from hardware and devices, to cloud services and virtualization. For example, 62 percent have deployed or plan to deploy tablets within the next six months. That compares to the 50 percent reported for the second half of 2011, according to Spiceworks.

Also, 48 percent use cloud services and 64 percent use virtualization, compared to 28 percent and 54 percent for the first half of 2011, respectively.

While the growth of virtualization is tapering off, the respondents are virtualizing more applications — 3.1 applications versus an average of 2.1 applications a year ago.

The largest portion of IT budgets will be allocated to hardware purchases, followed by software and IT services, according to the survey.

The State of SMB IT survey included 1,498 respondents from around the world. About half of respondents were from North America; 33 percent were from Europe, the Middle East and Africa; 15 percent from Asia-Pacific; and 4 percent from Latin America, according to Spiceworks.

Author: Mikael Ricknäs
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Social Media, Desktop Virtualization Key for SMBs in 2011

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The research includes predictions for six technologies IT departments should consider in the coming year, including adoption of social media strategies, cloud computing and virtualization, as well as mobile applications and analytics tools.

According to a study by IT analytics firm Info-Tech Research Group, 2011 will be the year of mass adoption for technologies the company said businesses have been slow to adopt. The research includes predictions for six technologies IT departments should consider in the coming year, including adoption of social media strategies, cloud computing and virtualization, as well as mobile applications and analytics tools.

“As budget freezes start to thaw out, end users and businesses are very actively adopting new technologies and maintaining status quo is no longer an option for IT,” said Andy Woyzbun, lead research analyst for Info-Tech Research Group. “IT shops will need to push the release of new and innovative technologies in 2011 in order to continue widespread growth.”

Research suggested marketing departments are integrating social media into their plans without IT participation due to its rapid uptake by prospect and customers, while larger organizations are also utilizing social media platforms to improve the effectiveness of internal communications and employee-to-employee collaboration, driving superior team productivity and knowledge sharing. “IT must secure privacy and integrity by creating a policy to manage organizational use of social media,” the report noted.

Mobile devices with sophisticated capabilities such as smartphones and tablets will enable organizational differentiation through unique apps, the company predicted, noting marketing departments have already adopted the use of mobile apps in their plans and are hiring third-party developers because many internal IT departments lack the expertise to develop and deploy mobile apps.

Enterprise Content Management applications will help IT shops avoid chaos in the efficient storage, control and retrieval of documents, e-mails and video, according to Info-Tech. “These are growing in volume and business importance. The disciplines, such as control and security, developed around operational databases must be extended to the other data collected by IT,” the report said.

In addition, the firm predicted desktop virtualization (VDI) would alleviate shoulder pain for commuters and headaches for the IT worker. “As an easier to support alternative to the traditional deployment of software on PCs, VDI will allow workers to access their desktop from any computer,” the report said. “Early adopters say VDI payback is mainly operational (ex. Fast provisioning of new desktops and centralized application management), but licensing schemes and technology will make the VDI market ready for the next wave of desktop refreshers.”

Analytic tools, as a cost-effective option to Business Intelligence (BI) platforms, are also seen as becoming more widespread in businesses in 2011, as well as cloud computing platforms. “The cloud will provide an increasing set of lower cost alternatives to in-house services, so organizations facing the need to expand the range of IT services or to add capacity should examine cloud alternatives to in-house solutions,” the report predicted. “Whether or not the Cloud makes sense in a particular situation, Cloud solutions will become the benchmark for how management assesses the cost and quality of services provided internally by IT.”
According to a study by IT analytics firm Info-Tech Research Group, 2011 will be the year of mass adoption for technologies the company said businesses have been slow to adopt.

“As budget freezes start to thaw out, end users and businesses are very actively adopting new technologies and maintaining status quo is no longer an option for IT,” said Andy Woyzbun, lead research analyst for Info-Tech Research Group. “IT shops will need to push the release of new and innovative technologies in 2011 in order to continue widespread growth.”

Research suggested marketing departments are integrating social media into their plans without IT participation due to its rapid uptake by prospect and customers, while larger organizations are also utilizing social media platforms to improve the effectiveness of internal communications and employee-to-employee collaboration, driving superior team productivity and knowledge sharing. “IT must secure privacy and integrity by creating a policy to manage organizational use of social media,” the report noted.

Mobile devices with sophisticated capabilities such as smartphones and tablets will enable organizational differentiation through unique apps, the company predicted, noting marketing departments have already adopted the use of mobile apps in their plans and are hiring third-party developers because many internal IT departments lack the expertise to develop and deploy mobile apps.

Enterprise Content Management applications will help IT shops avoid chaos in the efficient storage, control and retrieval of documents, e-mails and video, according to Info-Tech. “These are growing in volume and business importance. The disciplines, such as control and security, developed around operational databases must be extended to the other data collected by IT,” the report said.

In addition, the firm predicted desktop virtualization (VDI) would alleviate headaches for the IT worker. “As an easier to support alternative to the traditional deployment of software on PCs, VDI will allow workers to access their desktop from any computer,” the report said. “Early adopters say VDI payback is mainly operational (ex. Fast provisioning of new desktops and centralized application management), but licensing schemes and technology will make the VDI market ready for the next wave of desktop refreshers.”

Analytic tools, as a cost-effective option to Business Intelligence (BI) platforms, are also seen as becoming more widespread in businesses in 2011, as well as cloud computing platforms. “The cloud will provide an increasing set of lower cost alternatives to in-house services, so organizations facing the need to expand the range of IT services or to add capacity should examine cloud alternatives to in-house solutions,” the report predicted. “Whether or not the Cloud makes sense in a particular situation, Cloud solutions will become the benchmark for how management assesses the cost and quality of services provided internally by IT.”

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Cloud Computing Survey Points to Arrival of ‘Cloud Thinking’

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Cloud computing is coming of age in large enterprises, according to a new study of North American and European IT professionals conducted by Management Insight on behalf of CA Technologies. The group surveyed IT professionals in organizations with 1,000 to 10,000-plus employees, revealing that enterprises are active in the cloud, and their virtualization efforts are contributing to broader interest in cloud computing. The results also indicate a shift toward approaching IT using “cloud thinking,” accelerating the uses of cloud computing and helping to align IT decision makers and implementers around common goals of efficiency, flexibility and scalability.

Top line results of the study include:

* More than 80 percent of enterprises and 92 percent of the largest enterprises have at least one cloud service; 53 percent of IT implementers indicate having more than six cloud services.
* The primary incentives for organizations exploring the cloud are to save money (44 percent) and gain greater cost control (35 percent). IT staff are incented by increasing efficiency (35 percent) and a desire to work with the latest technologies (34 percent).
* Security and control remain perceived barriers to the cloud. Executives are primarily concerned about security (68 percent) and poor service quality (40 percent), while roughly half of all respondents consider risk of job loss and loss of control as top deterrents.
* Virtualization maturity leads to more optimistic attitudes toward cloud: Virtualization-intensive organizations are four times more likely to move as many services as possible to both public and private clouds.
* Attitudes toward public and private clouds align. Respondents cite cost savings, resource efficiencies, flexibility and servicing global users as drivers for public clouds; similarly, cost, scalability, flexibility and manageability are drivers for private clouds. Security is noted as both a driver and deterrent for public and private clouds.

Organizations Are Active in the Cloud

Collaboration tools lead cloud deployments at 75 percent, with hosted email, antivirus/spam filters and web conferencing noted as the most common applications being deployed in the cloud by large enterprises.

Infrastructure and development platforms in the cloud (Infrastructure- and Platform-as-a-Service) appear to be poised for growth with 58 percent of large organizations already using these services, and 43 percent considering them. Such use and consideration sets up infrastructure clouds as the next wave of cloud adoption.

“This study confirms that large enterprises are exploring the benefits of the cloud, and are looking to expand from basic services like collaboration to more complex Infrastructure and Platform cloud services,” said Adam Famularo, general manager, Cloud Computing Business, CA Technologies. “It validates a trend we predicted, that IT executives are rapidly becoming orchestrators of an IT supply chain made up of internal and external services. With this shift comes a growing need for sophisticated management and security, allowing enterprises to change how they think about IT to reap the full rewards that cloud computing offers – agility, efficiency and scalability.”

Virtualization Maturity is Contributing to Cloud Thinking

On average, roughly one-third of x86 servers are virtualized within the enterprise today. Nearly half of these companies (46 percent) indicate a “managed” stage of virtualization, with the ability to move virtual machines and manage them for high availability. As enterprises move along the virtualization maturity lifecycle from basic (unmanaged virtual servers), to managed, to advanced (dynamic resource scheduling and consolidated back-up), and on to “cloud-like” (advanced virtual automation, full disaster recovery via virtualization), the applications they earmark for the cloud also begin to shift.

Email leads in the managed stage (53 percent); desktop virtualization and databases peak during the advanced stage (30 percent); and industry-specific applications top all others in the cloud-like stage (32 percent).

In addition, respondents indicate plans to continue to move mission-critical applications from non-virtualized infrastructure to virtual machines over the next couple of years. Enterprises are running nearly half (47 percent) of these applications on non-virtualized infrastructure today, which will drop by 17 percent in the next two years. Of that 17 percent, 10 percent will shift to public and private clouds.

As IT reorganizes itself for more dynamic virtualized environments, the tendency to embrace the cloud rises. Virtualization-intensive organizations are roughly four times more likely to move as many services as possible into both public and private clouds. Overall, the perceptions of cloud computing take on a more optimistic tone as organizations advance their technical infrastructure to support more dynamic environments.

Adoption Polarizes Around Public and Private Clouds

When asked to share their viewpoints on drivers and barriers to the adoption of public and private clouds, respondents cite cost as a driver and barrier, suggesting the true impact and relevance of “cost savings” is still unresolved.

Drivers of public cloud adoption also cite resource efficiencies, flexibility and servicing global users as key drivers. Deterrents include security, compliance, internal resistance and the perception that public clouds are not suitable for some business applications.

Cost and security also confound private cloud adoption, with respondents citing them as both drivers and barriers. Additional drivers include scalability, flexibility and manageability, while complexity, availability and reliability, and slow adoption of new technology are seen as deterrents.

Survey participants also provided input on advocates and opponents of cloud computing within their organizations. Senior management (C-level and senior IT executives) are the primary advocates for public clouds, while those with more day-to-day responsibilities over virtualization and servers are seen as the leading private cloud advocates (32 percent of directors of IT operations or senior data center management, 31 percent of virtualization team, 30 percent of server management team). Not surprisingly, the security team topped the list as the primary opponent for both public and private clouds (44 percent and 27 percent respectively), with business unit leaders/managers sharing that attitude (23 percent and 18 percent respectively).

The Cloud is Coming of Age in Large Enterprises

Overall, the study confirms large organizations are embracing both public and private clouds. Enterprises are already active in cloud computing. Virtualization is fostering the confidence and skills needed to encourage further adoption among large organizations to build private clouds. Ultimately, living in this duopoly of public and private cloud environments will require enterprises to adapt their integration tools and management philosophies to provide end-user services across both types of clouds.

Methodology

This Management Insight Technologies study was executed as a web-based study. The sample was collected in September 2010 and is comprised of 434 IT professionals across two regions – North America (273) and Europe (161). Respondents working for companies that produce cloud computing software were excluded. Qualified respondents had to be sufficiently knowledgeable about their company’s IT environments. The screener and sample frame were developed to target a fairly even representation of IT decision makers and IT implementers and of the three company sizes within each region. The sample was then weighted to achieve a ratio of 60% IT decision makers and 40% IT implementers, and 36% Medium (1000-4999 employees), 29% Large (5000-9999 employees) and 35% Mega (10,000 or more employees) Enterprises within each region. To assure market-based representation of each region, the sample was also weighted based on total IT spend by country per data from the IDC Black Book.

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