Data Centers Grow and the Cloud Grows

According to ZDNet survey 50% of data centers have grown over the last 3 years and will continue to grow. At the same time, 36% of data center managers have implemented cloud in the plan up from 14% last year. Another 35% of data center managers are looking seriously at adding cloud to their IT Plans. The outlook is that by 2016 80% to 90% of companies will have some form of cloud implemented in their organization.

The challenge with the ZDNet data is it does not address how much of these data center will be in the cloud. Currently I have seen reports that this is in the 5% - 10% range. I have seen projections showing that as much as 50% of IT spending will be in the cloud by 2020. There is no question that the cloud is a high growth space and very compelling especially for those applications that are difficult to support – “Can’t we just put that in the cloud?”

ZDNet Article: “Cloud computing dominates data center agenda, says survey” by Larry Dignan

http://tinyurl.com/694rsd5

Virtualization Update

Virtualization has been on a high growth rate for several years. Between 30% to 50% of all servers are now virtualized and there are signs the growth is slowing. The next step is to virtualize the major business applications. Companies have virtualized the low hanging fruit but have delayed on the major applications to mitigate perceived risk. 82% of companies have implemented VMWare, 43% have implemented Microsoft Hyper-V and 33% have implemented Citrix Xen. Clearly there are many organizations with a mix! Microsoft has done a great job gaining ground with Hyper-V because of ease of use, solid features, great price, System Center management integration and a strong user base preferring fewer manufacturers.

Source: “Is Virtualization Hitting the Wall?” by Drew Robb
http://tinyurl.com/4myl4q6