Dramatic rise in cloud usage by enterprises

SINGAPORE: In just two years, cloud has ascended from a solution that was not fully understood by nearly a third of IT decision makers globally to one that 82 per cent of enterprises are using today, according to a study by Savvis.

It represents a 30.2 per cent increase over 2010 when just 63 per cent of enterprises were cloud users, a release added.

Vanson Bourne, an independent research firm, surveyed 480 IT decision makers from enterprise organisations across the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, France and Germany.

The research revealed that two-thirds of current cloud users adopted cloud within the last 12 months and 90 per cent are experiencing benefits delivered by their use of cloud computing, even if they are relatively early into their uptake.

The most important benefits are improved reliability (30 per cent), scalability (29 per cent) and lower total cost of ownership for their entire infrastructure, the study says.

The findings divulged the increasing popularity of enterprise-grade clouds, with 95 per cent of IT leaders already using or planning to deploy enterprise-grade cloud for their applications.

Respondents define enterprise-grade cloud as offering comprehensive security (64 per cent), high availability (54 per cent), high levels of performance (47 per cent) and choice of service levels (35 per cent).

“In just one year, a significant number of IT decision makers have realised the benefits of cloud infrastructure services to drive efficiencies and a competitive advantage,” said Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer at Savvis. “Cloud has become increasingly mainstream as evidenced in our study by the fact that 47 percent of global IT leaders believe they should prioritise a cloud infrastructure solution over their own IT infrastructure for any new applications or services deployed.”

Mark Smith, managing director, Asia at Savvis, said that Singapore is a leading market for cloud adoption with more than 90 per cent of enterprises surveyed using cloud infrastructure services today. Designed partly in Singapore by our local cloud development team, the Savvis Symphony Virtual Private Data Centre solution meets business needs for enterprise-class security, performance and availability, he added.

Singapore leads the field in terms of cloud adoption with 91 per cent of survey respondents using cloud in 2011 compared to 76 per cent in 2010.

Eighty-five per cent of enterprises in the US now use cloud infrastructure services, up from 66 per cent last year.

In the UK, 77 per cent of organisations are using cloud compared to just 57 per cent last year.

More cloud users in the US (39 per cent) are using enterprise-grade cloud services than those in the UK (23 per cent) or Singapore (21 per cent).

A higher proportion of cloud users in the European Union are using enterprise-grade cloud services (40 per cent) than those in the US (39 per cent) and Singapore (21 per cent).