A survey and a set of predictions have come out this week that, taken together, paint a fascinating picture of the growing complexity and diversity of Cloud-based services as they develop. They demonstrate that the Cloud is now being applied right across the spectrum of business use.
The survey comes from Digital Realty Trust, one of the largest US-based operators in the wholesale data centre marketplace, and shows that data centre expansion amongst European large enterprises is now very much the order of the day. Some 80% of European enterprises are planning to expand their data centre resources over the coming year.
The predictions come from the analyst firm, Gartner, with one of the key estimates being that some 20% of all businesses will `own no IT assets’ by 2012.
Both of these figures, in their own way, point to Cloud-based services becoming one of the primary IT resources for all businesses, from the largest to the smallest. What is more, the pace at which Cloud-based services are being taken up is increasing.
The Digital Realty survey, conducted by Campos Research and Analysis, covers European businesses with a minimum turnover of £600 million and more than 2,000 personnel. In addition to its finding that 80% of them plan expansion next year it found that 62% had already built a new data centre in the last 2 years. This shows that good proportion of major corporates are now on a 2-year expansion cycle.
It also found that the Cloud – in its broadest sense – is set to be a core part of the overall expansion. Nearly 80% of those planning to expand this year also plan to work with a third party partner in the implementation of their new data centres. The wholesale data centre and co-location service providers look as though they are providing the cost-effective flexibility and speed to market that enterprises require as the overall economy starts to pick up.
This would seem to be borne out by the fact that nearly half of those enterprises with expansion plans are looking to set up new facilities in two or more locations, with London, Paris and Frankfurt being the most popular choices. These locations coincide with the major European financial centres.
For all but the most well-resourced businesses this a rate of expansion that would be difficult to finance and project manage, particularly as nearly of all those companies looking to establish two data centres this year are targeting new locations for one of them.
Private Cloud services are, therefore, becoming an increasingly important component of large enterprise IT provisioning, if only because the users can get the benefit not only of specialised expertise within the service provider community but also because of the cost reductions possible through sharing expensive data centre resources.
At the other end of the scale, Cloud services look as though they could become a serious driving force for Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs). Tech analysts, Gartner, are of the opinion that, by 2012, some 20% of all businesses will have no IT on-premise resources to speak of, other than some kind of client system through which to access Cloud-based services.
At first that may seem to be a bold estimate but it is also possible – indeed quite probable – that it will fall short of reality. For example, there are some baseline facts that need to be considered first, such as the current upturn in the overall economy. If that continues, the number of small business start-ups will rise significantly, and the SMBs already constitute the dominant share of the overall total of businesses.
Secondly, there are already a growing number of SMBs using the likes of Google Apps as the basis for many of their IT services. This trend is certain to continue and grow, particularly when Microsoft really starts pushing hard with its own Cloud services. The latter does also have the advantage of a well-established network of channel business partners with domain expertise in just about every area an SMB could require. So running all aspects of a small business within the Cloud will be increasingly easy over the coming year, to the point where setting up an on-premise installation will start to be seen as a waste of valuable resources.
Lastly, there is the move by Parallels Inc. to pitch a package of SMB-targeted service tools at the service providers themselves. This has the potential to give a wide range of Cloud service providers the toolset needed to hit the operational needs of most small businesses, both in terms of service management and, through the Application Packaging Standard, the applications and services they are likely to need.
This year will see an increasing number of early adopters of such SMB-targeted services and, subject to no horror stories emerging and no return to general economic disaster, 2011 should see a combination of increasing confidence in the services available and a real upturn in the number of SMBs joining the fray.
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