Survey reveals OpenStack adoption plans by enterprises

DUBAI, UAE: A majority of enterprise IT decision makers surveyed say that OpenStack is part of their organization's future cloud infrastructure plans, according to results of the 2013 Path to an OpenStack-Powered Cloud survey announced today by Red Hat, Inc.

The OpenStack and private cloud development survey of 200 U.S. enterprise decision makers, commissioned by Red Hat through IDG Connect, found that the majority of organizations (51 per cent) are on either their second or third implementation of private cloud, using internally developed solutions or alternative offerings from vendors.

"The survey findings offer a clear indication that OpenStack is quickly becoming a reality for many IT organizations, and can serve as a viable cloud infrastructure backbone for private cloud," said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, Virtualization, Red Hat.

"The survey shows that business leaders understand that OpenStack can bring improved visibility, speed, flexibility, and agility to the private cloud. As these organizations move to OpenStack-powered clouds, they are looking to IT industry leaders to deliver enterprise-class OpenStack by offering a normalized lifecycle, training and support, and a broad ecosystem of partners and OpenStack-certified solutions that will make their journey seamless," added Balakrishnan.

The survey results show that internal development of private cloud has left organizations with a host of challenges to address, including:

* Resource management (21 per cent);

* Simplifying IT management (18 per cent);

* Application management (18 per cent); and

* Application migration (18 per cent).

As organizations work to address these issues, survey results indicate that enterprises are moving, or have plans to move, to OpenStack for private cloud initiatives.

Sixty (60) per cent of survey respondents indicate that they are in the early stages of their OpenStack deployments, and have either not yet completed the implementation stage or are early in the process. An overwhelming 84 per cent of respondents say that OpenStack is part of their future cloud plans.

Survey respondents cite management visibility (73 per cent); deployment speed (72 per cent); platform flexibility (69 per cent); better agility (69 per cent); and competitive advantage (67 per cent) as the unique benefits offered by OpenStack over private cloud alternatives.

The top challenges to OpenStack adoption include IT staff skill gaps (32 per cent), budget limitations (23 per cent), and questions about OpenStack project maturity (11 per cent) and where to start (10 per cent).

Survey data further indicates that decision makers believe OpenStack vendors and system integrators are best-positioned to provide experience, help justify investments, and close employee skill gaps.