The numbers are in. According to a 2016 IDC study -spanning over 6,100 organizations and 31 countries -the 'second wave of cloud adoption' continues to advance with almost 68% of organizations using some form of cloud.
Private cloud deployments remain an essential part of the mix: 54% of organizations surveyed are in fact adopting private cloud and 52% are adopting public cloud. And private cloud adoption shows no signs of slowing down ... organizations expect to increase on-premises private cloud spending by 40% over the next two years. Not surprisingly, we live in a hybrid cloud world with 73% of cloud adopters reporting that they have some form of hybrid cloud strategy in place today, even if -as always -there are various interpretations regarding what hybrid cloud actually is.
OpenStack remains top of mind for many of the organizations that IDC surveyed -59% of cloud adopters view OpenStack as an important part of their cloud strategy (via open source and/or commercial distributions). Respondents for whom OpenStack is a more important part of their cloud strategy had higher expectations for cloud to improve strategic key performance indicators than those for whom OpenStack was less important.
Source: IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Cisco, Cloud Going Mainstream. All Are Trying, Some Are Benefiting; Few Are Maximizing Value. September 2016
This signals that there is a continued appetite for OpenStack-based private clouds as a viable alternative to other options that can be perceived as being more proprietary in nature. Nonetheless, as we recently commented in a CIOReview article, the challenge is to 'mold the collective creativity of the open source community into enterprise-class, consumable, well-supported software packages that can function flawlessly across heterogeneous IT environments.' And this is precisely why we continue to work with the community and our technology partners to provide our customers with choice.
We are well positioned to capitalize on these trends. We take a comprehensive approach, including products, services and tools to bring to our clients a rich set of solutions:
These offerings will help organizations bridge the skillset gaps that they may be facing as they accelerate their digital transformation strategies while adopting DevOps methodologies and abating organizational silos to foster OpenStack-based cloud native initiatives.
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