According to a newly-released Verizon report, enterprise IT departments are rapidly adopting cloud computing to deliver applications and services.
The "State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud 2014" study, which collected data from June 2013 and July 2014, found that cloud services have been a driving force behind business innovation. Cloud computing is becoming a more prominent feature in enterprise IT deployments, with current cloud users expecting to spend 54 percent of their IT budgets on cloud services over the next two years. The report revealed that 65 percent of organizations are currently utilizing the cloud, and spending on cloud services by enterprises has increased almost 40 percent from the year before.
Over 70 percent of survey respondents reported having plans to utilize the cloud to run public-facing production applications by 2017, an 11 percent increase. The study also discovered that 72 percent of participants plan to put the majority of their workloads in the cloud by 2017, which shows significant growth from the 58 percent of enterprises taking advantage of application support today.
Marking a major shift in perceptions of security, 41 percent of companies reported relying on public cloud infrastructures to host mission-critical workloads. In fact, 100 percent of the enterprises that reported currently using cloud services said they did not believe the cloud put their IT systems at risk. One-third of organizations actually reported an improvement in security after deploying a cloud infrastructure.
Another interesting discovery made by the study was that companies are no longer focused solely on reducing expense when turning to the cloud. While cost savings are expected from the use of cloud services, they are no longer the biggest factor in adopting the technology. Agility was the biggest reason participants reported implementing the cloud, with 32 percent citing it as a factor for adoption.While the cloud is beneficial to all companies, smaller organizations receive an even bigger advantage from the increased agility offered as it helps to create a level playing field with larger enterprises.