Hybrid infrastructures predicted to dominate cloud computing
Cloud computing is increasingly set to be dominated by hybrid infrastructures, according to new research by leading cloud provider Oracle.
A study conducted by IDG Connect on behalf of Oracle found that private cloud adoption is close to maturity as companies come around to the benefits of using the technology. Close to two-thirds (60 per cent) of surveyed for the research stated that they have reached intermediate or mature levels of cloud adoption, while this is expected to rise to 82 per cent in 2017.
Hybrid solutions are become more popular, with over a third (36 per cent) stating that they prefer this option, while 32 per cent favoured private cloud solutions and 17 per cent said they would use a public cloud service.
"The growing maturity of private cloud means that organisations have learned many lessons about how to deploy cloud successfully," said Oracle.
Its research found that the most important building block of a successful private cloud infrastructure is having effective governance controls in place, which was cited by 34 per cent of respondents to the study.
This was followed by standardisation of IT (27 per cent), winning the support of key decision makers (25 per cent) and ensuring strong IT change management (17 per cent).
Another key finding of the research was that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is currently viewed as most important than Database-as-a-Service, with 68 per cent opting for SaaS and 61 per cent choosing DaaS. Lagging behind in third place was Platform-as-a-Service, cited by 57 per cent.
Oracle's study backed up several other pieces of research on cloud computing by finding that there are still significant concerns surrounding private cloud adoption. These were shown to include data security (cited by 55 per cent of respondents to the poll), integration with existing applications (47 per cent), available skills (45 per cent) and hardware costs (44 per cent).
Businesses looking to move services into the cloud should evaluate the performance of their existing network and consider setting up a leased line or MPLS network.
