CDW LLC, a leading provider of technology solutions to government, education and healthcare customers recently came up with the results of its first Cloud Computing Tracking Poll.
The CDW poll was aimed at assessing current and future cloud computing use in business, government, healthcare and education and surveyed 1,200 IT professionals familiar with their organization’s use of, or plans for, cloud computing. In CDW’s definition, cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned.
According to the report, currently twenty-eight percent of U.S. organizations are using cloud computing. For majority of these companies (73 percent), their first step into the cloud was related to the implementation of a single cloud application.
The survey revealed that commodity applications are the most commonly used applications to be found in the cloud. These applications include email (50 percent of cloud users), file storage (39 percent), web and video conferencing (36 and 32 percent, respectively), and online learning (34 percent).
Among current cloud users, 84 percent said they cut application costs by moving to the cloud, while on an average cloud users reported saving 21 percent annually on those applications moved to the cloud.
The respondents who identified themselves as cloud users said they expect to spend no more than one-third of their IT budget (34 percent) on cloud computing by 2016. This investment on cloud resources and applications, they expected, will give them 31 percent saving on their IT budget.
Non-cloud users said that their cloud expenditure will be more than one-quarter of their IT budget (28 percent) by 2016, and this, according to them will help them save 23 percent on their IT budget.
Analyzing the trend, senior director of managed services at CDW David Cottingham said that organizations are taking careful, selective steps into the cloud. The trend according to Cottingham represents a significant shift in how computing resources are provided and managed.
“The fact that even current cloud users anticipate spending just a third of their IT budget on cloud computing within five years suggests that before wide-scale implementation, IT managers are taking a hard look at their IT governance, architecture, security and other prerequisites for cloud computing, in order to ensure that their implementations are successful,” Cottingham concluded.
“With thoughtful planning, organizations can realize benefits that align directly with their organizational goals: consolidated IT infrastructure, reduced IT energy and capital costs, and ‘anywhere’ access to documents and applications,” Cottingham explained in his report.
Recently CDW announced that Donna F. Zarcone has been elected to the company's Board of Directors.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
Madhubanti Rudra is a contributing editor for MSPToday. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
