As 2016 comes to an end, we wanted to take a moment to look to the year to come and reflect on the state of the cloud market. This is our take:
Cloud Market Maturation and Acceleration
Currently, the use of cloud services and apps is reaching a point of normalcy across the corporate world and the statistics are there to drive home this point. According to a comprehensive survey conducted by IDG, 70% of all organizations have at least one app in the cloud today (which climbs higher to 75% for companies with more than 1,000 employees) but that number could rise to 90% in the next 3 years.
In addition, the survey went on to highlight additional takeaways about the state of the cloud marketplace as a whole. First, the business world is using a variety of cloud models to meet their needs. The breakdown of usage is as follows: 62% private, 60% public and 26% hybrid. Also, companies with over 1,000 employees are allocating a large portion of the budget to cloud; in fact, the average will reach $3.03M in 2017. When looking at the market as a whole though, 28% of organizations’ total IT budgets will be dedicated to cloud computing next year.
Cloud Services on the Rise
The cloud market is growing rapidly – with the product usage at 45% for SaaS service, 30% using IaaS, and 19% utilizing PaaS. However, there are certain sub-products in these categories that are set to truly gain traction in the marketplace in 2017 and beyond.
The aforementioned survey found that 22% of organizations interviewed are predicting that data analytics will be the leading cloud application migrated to in the next twelve months. In addition, 21% of these companies say that data storage/management will be a high priority for the market as well. The facts support these sentiments too. 43% of organizations do in fact have plans to migrate to these products in the next 3 years.
Hype Around Hyperconvergence Will Get Louder
Currently, private cloud services require advanced virtualization, standardization, automation, self-service access and resources monitoring just like their public cloud counterparts. Integrating these components can be a lengthy and arduous process.
Recently, Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) has arrived on the cloud landscape promising to offer pre-integrated compute and storage resources that will get a cloud implementation running faster. There is a growing consensus with analysts that HCI will sustain it’s growth and continue to garner favor in the market through 2017.
Cloud Infrastructure: The New Normal
In 2017, it will continue to be clear that cloud infrastructure will soon be the rule across the corporate world and not the exception. IDG predicts that within 18 months, the majority of organizations’ IT infrastructures will be entirely cloud-based. In addition, by 2018, only 40% of IT environments will have their apps and platform on-premises.
Challenges to the Cloud
Even though cloud is becoming more and more mainstream, it is still a disruptor to a legacy IT environment. Therefore, there will continue to be challenges to implementing an effective cloud strategy in 2017.
Given that high profile, cyber security breaches were consistently in the 2016 headlines, it should come to no one’s surprise that the biggest cloud strategy challenges in 2017 will revolve around security. Some concerns that many organizations will most likely find: fears about where data is stored, overall cloud security, and obtaining talent with the skill-set to manage the cloud’s security and to get maximum value out of their IT investments.
Opportunities for the Cloud
With challenges comes opportunities, with the right provider any concerns could be eliminated. Knowing where your data is stored, cloud security, and getting maximum value out of your IT investments is crucial – cue in RapidScale.
RapidScale delivers nothing but the highest quality protection for customer data and information. We have equipped ourselves with government-grade facilities to hold sensitive information for safe, encrypted storage in SAS70, SSAE 16 Tier 3 data centers. Every one of these data centers features on-premises security guards, key card protocols, biometric scanning protocols and around-the-clock interior and exterior surveillance monitor access.
CloudBackup
Crypto ransomware has been deemed by many security experts as the greatest security threat to organizations today. RapidScale’s CloudBackup solution can protect against this and is a reliable way to recover files following an attack. The solution provides organizations with a seamless and secure backup of their data to RapidScale’s cloud. RapidScale takes care of all the management, monitoring and dependability of the customer’s backed up environment. CloudBackup is secure, encrypted, scalable and efficient. Learn more about CloudBackup.
CloudRecovery
RapidScale’s CloudRecovery is designed for large scale failures and true disasters, rather than single-item restore – depending on the extent of the situation, this solution may be necessary. Together, CloudRecovery and CloudBackup can create a well-rounded business continuity plan for a cyber attack. Learn more about CloudRecovery.
Overall, the cloud market will accelerate faster in 2017 as enterprises seek to gain efficiencies as they scale their compute resources to better serve customers. Go to RapidScale.net to learn more on how we can be the right provider for you in the new year.
Author Credit: Ben Mervis
