Cost Worries Grow Along with Cloud Adoption
More data points emerged this week about cloud adoption rates as well as the reasons behind application delivery snafus in the cloud and virtual platforms.
The findings emerged in separate surveys from a VMware (NYSE: VMW) event and another study released by VMware's new parent company, Dell Inc., which acquired VMware along with its parent company EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) this week.
Dell's annual Global Technology Adoption Index released this week argues that cloud and big data adopters are starting to see a return on the investment in the form of revenue growth, efficiency improvements and "organizational growth metrics." The tech adoption index also attempted to quantify the benefits, concluding that 53 percent of organizations surveyed that have adopted cloud, mobile and big data technologies are growing faster than laggards.
Security remains a major barrier to cloud deployment, but the Dell survey found that cost has emerged as another barrier to adoption and expansion of cloud infrastructure and big data analytics.
Meanwhile, a survey released by virtualization specialist CloudPhysics during a VMware event this week, found that 68 percent of respondents said configuration changes in virtualized infrastructure were the main reason for application disruptions. The finding highlighted "the complexity facing VMware administrators," more than half of whom manage virtual environments with only VMware vCenter and without operational management tools.
CloudPhysics, which specializes in analyzing data about and troubleshooting virtualized infrastructure, said its survey of more than 1,000 VMworld attendees also found that large enterprises are increasingly focused on creating software-defined datacenters. If accurate, the finding is good news for Dell, which moved this week to acquire EMC and VMware in order to target big enterprise customers as compute, storage, networking and other IT infrastructure converges in the datacenter.
The Dell index found cloud adoption continuing to increase globally from 79 percent in 2014 to 82 percent in 2015. Western Europe leads the surge with 6-percent year-on-year growth in cloud adoption. Cloud adopters most often cited cost savings (42 percent), speed and efficiency (40 percent) and better allocation of IT resources (38 percent) as the key benefits.
Still, the index found that costs associated with ramping up cloud infrastructure and big data analytics "are becoming a more pressing concern globally." While 31 percent of respondents still identified security as the top barrier to IT adoption, one-quarter of respondents also cited cost concerns.
As more enterprises adopt hybrid cloud strategies, the index found that 30 percent of respondents worry about the upfront costs. A slightly lower percentage cited higher costs when implementing private or managed private clouds, the Dell index found.
While data security remains a concern, cost is an even big barrier to adoption for big data technologies. "In organizations currently using big data, the top barrier when extracting big data insights is the cost of the IT infrastructure," the survey concluded.
Operational analytics providers like CloudPhysics counter that they have the tools that can keep costly virtualized IT infrastructure up and running. "Analytics must accompany and drive optimizations to protect against disruptions to business operations" like efficient delivery of business applications, asserted John Blumenthal, co-founder of CloudPhysics.
