Year over Year Private Cloud Adoption up by More Than a Third
There is no doubt that the path to value for Private Clouds has been harder and taken more time than anyone first imagined. The good news is that two new reports from Forrester on Private Cloud Adoption in North America and Europe clearly show strong growth in the adoption of Private Cloud. Authored by Lauren Nelson with Glenn O’Donnell and Andrew Hewitt, all Forrester analyst who cover IT Infrastructure and Operations, these reports provide more evidence that Private Cloud is not dead and that Hybrid or Multi-Cloud environments are becoming the new normal (see my prior blogs, “Private Cloud is Dead, Long Live…” and “Multi-Cloud, Hybrid Cloud the New Normal”).
VMware purchased the distribution rights to both reports and they are available for immediate download from this blog simply by clicking on the links below.
Adoption Profile: Private Cloud in North America, Q1 2016, by Lauren E. Nelson, February 16, 2016
Adoption Profile: Private Cloud in Europe, Q1 2016, by Lauren E. Nelson, January 25, 2016
Noteworthy
Rapid Year over Year Growth in Private Cloud
North American adoption of Private Cloud increased by over 33% from FY14 to FY15. In Europe the growth in adoption was even higher. The actual adoption percentage in North America went from 30% to 41% and in EMEA from 29% to 42%. The report does warn that there remains confusion over what really is a cloud with some portion of I&O managers. These individuals characterize advanced virtualization, a pre-requisite for cloud, as “cloud”. However, assuming that this reporting error or bias is consistent from year to year it is probably still safe to assume that FY15 saw a dramatic increase in the number of Private Cloud initiatives coming online over FY14.
More Capable Private Clouds
The North American survey also looked at more advanced cloud capabilities such as self-service, automated resource tracking and chargeback (it is not clear whether this was a focus of questioning in the European survey). What Forrester found in North America was a dramatic increase in the capability of a large number of the Private Cloud deployments. Self Service as part of Private Clouds jumped from 39% to 61%; resource tracking went from 31% to 69% and charge back went from 24% to 52%.
Hybrid Cloud, Multi-Cloud on the Rise
Consistent with other research that I have seen and that I have discussed in other blogs; a majority of companies operating a private cloud view the inclusion of one or more public cloud platforms into their computing resource mix as a critical part of their strategy. For North America, 58% of Private Cloud adopters indicated that a public cloud platform was a high or critical priority. Thirty two percent of North American Private Cloud adopters are already operating a public cloud platform alongside their Private Cloud. Similar results were found in the Europe where 37% of European Private Cloud adopters have also deployed a Public Cloud.
Developer Focused Clouds Gain Share
Forrester characterizes Private Clouds into four categories (Four Common Private Cloud Strategies, by Lauren E. Nelson, October 28, 2013). The categories that Forrester has developed are related to the priority of the cloud in terms of primary intended use for the environment. One of these categories, “Our priority is delivering fast resources for developers so they don’t use a public cloud” is all about providing developers fast access to resources. This category saw significant gains in both the North American and European surveys on cloud adoption. This makes sense to me when you consider that to a large degree Private Cloud was initially born as a response to the Public Cloud. The Public Cloud in turn was initially (and still is to a large degree) fueled by the pent up demand of developers seeking fast access to infrastructure resources so that they could be immediately productive.
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