The cloud, private or public delivery?

In its latest report on the cloud computing market in APEJ and a survey of end users, IDC says CIOs have been inundated with a barrage of information about the cloud in the last 12 months with “higher awareness of both the pros and cons of the public and private cloud delivery models.”

However, IDC cautions that along with this better understanding, there remain “concerns about the potential weaknesses of the cloud delivery models — security and availability.” In this context, IDC says, “informed and pragmatic decisions are being made about which applications are best suited to a cloud delivery model, and whether that application should be sourced from the public cloud, or whether implementing the application in a private cloud is the best solution.”

According to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Research Director of Asia/Pacific IT Services Research, Chris Morris the recent uncertain economic conditions have “accelerated interest in cloud delivery models because of their ability to deliver IT and business services at a much lower capital outlay. This is the key factor in which cloud services are now being evaluated."

Morris says that IDC has seen a rapid maturation of users’ understanding of cloud services and cloud computing in 2010. "Rather than ‘The Cloud’ being viewed as a collection of new technologies, savvy CIOs now see ‘The Cloud’ as being an extension of their sourcing strategies.

“Today, CIOs are adding both the public and private cloud delivery models to their services sourcing portfolio, just as they have added outsourced and managed services in the past. They are also applying the same selectivity to the cloud as they do to other externally sourced services.”

Morris also says that now that CIOs have the answers to some of their initial concerns surrounding the use of "The Cloud", they want to be informed enough to be able to ask the smart questions about their potential cloud vendors to ensure that they are making the best strategic decisions. "This is a very important stage of the development of the cloud market,” he says.

IDC’s survey revealed that, though the ability of cloud services to deliver IT cost savings continues to remain the top benefit identified by the respondents, other factors, especially in the mature markets, are also rated highly, and that workload is one of the most apparent determinants when choosing a delivery model.

The survey also found that enterprises remain most concerned about security, performance and control of data when considering cloud adoption. In Singapore, according to IDC, users are planning to place significant parts of their workload into private cloud environments instead of public cloud environments.