*Big Companies are Growing in the Cloud
Over 80 percent of large enterprises utilize cloud computing technologies. This number will continually increase as servers and IT departments are capable of ensuring security and efficiency in the cloud.
While the cultural shift to virtual offices is a fairly well covered subject, the switch to cloud computing in large enterprises has been somewhat shadowed thanks to the natural secrecy of businesses vs. their competition. A recent white paper, released on BNET, found that the switch to the cloud is farther reaching than many have imagined.
The paper is titled “The Arrival of “Cloud Thinking”, How and Why Cloud Computing Has Come of Age in Large Enterprises”. The paper is written by Management Insight Technologies, which gathered information from 434 IT professionals that work within large enterprises in North America and Europe. To view the paper on BNET you’ll need to sign up for a free account, but it’s worth it. BNET offers a wealth of information for any sized business.
According to the paper, over 80% of organizations with 1,000 or more employees have at least one cloud service. “More often, they have six.” The most common services that are offered by these large businesses are email, anti-virus/spam filters and web conferencing. The staple grains you might say.
While these mainstay services are considered standard to many home based users, it is only because of the relative ease that an individual or small business can set up security that makes this possible. The larger the network, the larger the gaps where holes can form. Subsequently, it is harder to implement the service on a large scale no matter how useful or desired it is.
Any time information ventures outside of a closed network, there will be security risks. It is a natural danger in the world of the virtual worker, and one that is but a small drawback to the economic benefits of working in a virtual workplace. It’s an even smaller worry when considering that security software is advancing nearly as rapidly as any other technology out there.
The paper states that a major reason large enterprises have not utilized expanded cloud computing is the fact that only “one-third [of] x86 servers are virtualized”. Essentially they are waiting on the technology to catch up with their desires. As these servers are “virtualized” over the next two years, these organizations will further understand the capabilities and potential of the cloud. According to the paper, we can anticipate seeing more favorable policies towards working with the cloud and a continued expansion of virtual office services within these large enterprises as more of these servers are virtualized.
Most interesting is that senior management at these organizations are the advocates for public clouds, whereas private cloud advocates are those with day to day responsibilities over virtualization and servers (in other words IT guys who, rightfully, do not want to battle the constant onslaught of hackers to large public clouds). Ultimately, large companies will be required to have public and private clouds and it will be up to the IT professionals that are currently cutting their teeth to manage these hybrid cloud office systems effectively and holistically.
The Distillation of Large Enterprise and the Cloud
1.The term, “everyone is doing it”, is applicable.
2.The average number of applications found in a large enterprise cloud: 6.
3.The technology is catching up with the desire for cloud computing, mainly in the security areas.
4.IT gurus are on an accelerated learning curve to deploy and manage these technologies and services.
5.Once more severs are “virtualized”, cloud computing will effectively become standardized business practice.
