Cloud Computing is now THE Dominant Trend in Enterprise IT

Last week at the SIIA On Demand Europe Conference in London, Bill McNee, Founder and CEO of researchers Saugatuck Technology updated European software companies on the growing importance of Cloud Computing in Enterprise IT. 


Their research survey of software vendors predicts that over 65 percent of all new business applications will be Cloud-based by the end of 2014 (compared to 20 percent in 2009). The key drivers for mid-sized companies will focus on cost savings, while larger Enterprises will gain from “Transforming the Enterprise”, adopting innovative Software as a Service (SaaS) applications and transitioning their IT workloads to new Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms. Here are some of the key trends identified by Saugatuck:-

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will replace traditional hosting services

Saugatuck’s research has forecast that over 60 percent of all customer external Cloud Computing workloads will be operating on infrastructures owned by fewer than 20 global providers. These providers will include traditional IT “Master Brands” such as HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP who will be competing against the newer Cloud providers including Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com. There is also an opportunity for Telecom providers to play a role in offering IaaS services particularly in Europe and Asia if they can leverage their automated service provisioning and robust management billing platforms (see our upcoming webinar featuring a case study of how SFR in France have launched an IaaS service).

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is becoming the IT Vendors battleground

PaaS will be a key enabler for software vendors as they transition from an on-premise to Cloud-based SaaS delivery model. These platforms provide all the tools developers need to deploy applications including support for multi-tenancy, security, subscription charging, performance management and scaling.   Oracle, for instance, used the conference to showcase their Oracle PaaS offering competing with Salesforce.com (Force.com) and Microsoft (Windows Azure). Other PaaS vendors include SAP (Netweaver), Tibco (Silver) and Open Source vendors including Red Hat.

Private Clouds Growing in Importance for Large Enterprises

Enterprises are showing a growing interest in deploying Cloud solutions within their IT datacentres  that are protected by their existing corporate firewalls. Saugatuck research has revealed that 70 percent of Private Cloud deployments will be packaged vendor offerings delivered as a drop-in appliance with software in companies with over 5,000 employees (see HP’s “Cloud in 30 Days Offering”).  The Private Clouds do encourage vendor lock. Many IT Directors view them as a stepping stone towards the evolution of more extensive Cloud services as the security and compliancy issues surrounding the Public Cloud offerings are resolved.

Cloud Integration Vendors stand to gain from Hybrid Cloud deployments

As the Private and Public Cloud services  are deployed there will be a need to link them to legacy IT applications like Sap and Oracle. Three integration specialists Boomi, Pervasive and Cast Iron (acquired by IBM ) explained how they can speed up the integrations between SaaS and legacy applications in an interesting panel session.

Saugatuck specialise in research, insight and advice on disruptive IT and you can find more information at their website.

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