Cloud computing investment accelerates
November 4, 2011
Leading global banks and other members of the Open Data Center Alliance, a group of more than 300 companies representing over $100bn in annual IT spending, are adopting cloud computing much faster than previously thought…
Members of the Alliance will triple their cloud deployment in the next two years according to a report published by the organisation on Thursday. This adoption rate is five times faster than broad market forecasts for the $90bn cloud computing market and reflects growing confidence in the delivery of cloud services based on industry standards.
The forecast came as the Alliance’s leadership meeting in New York outlined plans to address the main obstacles to cloud adoption, including publication of best practices for cloud application development and resiliency as well as collaborations on potential standards with the leading industry organisations for cloud security and management, the Cloud Security Alliance and Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).
The Open Data Center Alliance was formed a year ago to push for the development of industry standards for security, data center management and cloud-enabled applications and to accelerate of over $50bn in cloud investment over the following three years. It is led by a 12-member board of directors which includes representatives of BMW, Capgemini, China Life, China Unicom, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, National Australia Bank, Terremark, Disney Technology Solutions and Services and UBS.
“The ODCA membership comprises some of the largest adopters of cloud computing across the globe. Today’s news illustrates how rapidly our membership is implementing cloud in internal environments and with service providers,” said Marvin Wheeler, Terremark’s chief strategy officer and the Alliance’s chairman. “We’re delighted by the rapid progress to set standards for cloud security and management, and collaboration with data centre industry leaders to deliver open, interoperable cloud solutions.”
Among other findings from the recent survey of the membership, over 90 per cent of Alliance members have completed strategic planning for cloud implementation or are actively developing plans for cloud adoption. Internal enterprise is leading cloud adoption growth, with more than 40 per cent of members expecting to run more a significant proportion of their internal IT on cloud-based infrastructure within the next two years
More than 30 per cent of the membership identified human resources, legal and finance applications as primary targets for enterprise cloud adoption. Sales and marketing tools were also cited, making these applications the top targets for public cloud implementation.
Respondents identified application migration, security and simplified management as the top challenges to broad cloud adoption, underscoring the importance of the collaborative work planned with the DMTF to develope industry standards for managing cloud computing.
“Transparent oversight …. is critical to broad adoption of cloud computing,” said Curt Aubley, Lockheed Martin vice president and chief technology officer. “Working with DMTF enables our members to work hand in hand with some of the world’s experts in data centre management. “