Survey Sez: Cloud Computing Interesting, But Not In Many Plans

A recent survey conducted by open-source cloud-computing software maker Cloud.com and its partners Zenoss and BitNami has allowed the three to identify the needs of organizations and their preferences for deploying virtual infrastructure, thus allowing the trio to develop solutions that best suit the needs of cloud-computing users.

Survey respondents included more than 500 IT professionals, 40 percent of whom were CTOs, architects and IT managers from a wide-range of organizations including government, education and enterprises.

“There is an unprecedented amount of interest around cloud computing but, as with any nascent technology, industry users and solution providers are still coming to grips with the benefits and deployment options for cloud computing,” says Mark Hinkle, vice president/community at Cloud.com.

Here are some additional highlights of the survey:

• 61 percent of organizations are in the information-gathering or planning stages or have an approved cloud computing strategy (but no implementation), 20 percent have cloud implementations and 20 percent have no cloud computing plans at this point.
• Hardware savings was the Number One reason cited for adopting cloud computing (68 percent). Faster deployment of infrastructure (66 percent) and reducing systems management burdens (57 percent) also were listed as reasons for cloud adoption.
• Of the surveyed CTOs, scalability (71 percent) was the most popular reason for adopting cloud computing followed by elasticity or the need to adjust to fluctuations in resource demands (61 percent)

The survey also found that IT professionals are unwilling to cede total control to the cloud:

• 70 percent of data center managers choose to deploy infrastructure on dedicated resources (e.g., dedicated servers and data center resources), while only 12 percent prefer to deploy their infrastructure in the public cloud.
• 57 percent of participants preferred to host their infrastructure on their own hardware. 
• 36 percent of respondents prefer to run their infrastructure virtually but hosted on dedicated hardware at a managed data center.

According to Zenoss CEO Bill Karpovich, “What was telling from a service-assurance perspective is that half of the respondents who have deployed cloud computing felt their tools were not well-suited to manage cloud infrastructure. This reinforces our experience and belief that effectively managing the cloud requires tools built for the cloud."