Companies will get half of IT services in the cloud in 2017

A statistical study compiled by Interop ITX under the title “2017 State of the Cloud,” examines how the transition to cloud-based solutions is being made, and what the next key innovations will be.

Just started in 2017, the adoption of cloud-based technology solutions by companies continues its unstoppable growth. And as the use of the public cloud becomes a fact, information technology leaders must learn to “move” in this state of transition while using on improved tools and management methods.

Public cloud takes the lead on private cloud

During the last four years, the use of “virtualization or private cloud” has dropped significantly, from 52% in 2012 to 40% in 2016, while Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), the public alternative, almost doubled, Increasing from 30% to 57%, something that Interop considers “especially significant” since many of the participants in the study still work in quite traditional IT environments. To verify this trend, two other facts:

• Only 28% expect to use virtualization and the private cloud in new projects over the next year.

• In just two years, the number of respondents expected to get half or more of the IT services in the cloud has doubled.

This transition from the private cloud to the public cloud is driven by three essential factors: scalability, performance and better and faster access to resources. Three aspects that are very difficult to achieve in traditional IT environments, and which have significant business benefits.

And what about the hybrid cloud?

In 2016, the hybrid cloud, which allows applications to run partially on a “private cloud”, and partly on a public cloud, has been a major player. However, while the hybrid cloud seems to be a good idea, especially to easily launch virtual machines or to run specific applications with some components in the private cloud and others in a public cloud, in practice it involves more obstacles than advantages, especially with regard to latency, connections between the two clouds, and security issues.

Thus, as the use of the private cloud descends, so does the use of the hybrid cloud.

In addition to the greater importance and growth of the public cloud over the private cloud and the hybrid cloud, two other key aspects of this transition that will be accentuated throughout 2017 are dealt with in this report in detail: on the one hand, the management and administration of the cloud; on the other hand, the control of security and costs.