2012 Future of Cloud Computing Survey Exposes Hottest Trends in Cloud Adoption

North Bridge Venture Partners today announced the results of its second annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. Supported by 39 industry collaborators spanning established leaders, emerging, fast-growth companies, and startups

 The 2012 survey captures current industry perceptions, sentiments and emerging trends in cloud computing. 

Key Findings in the Survey include:

•    Companies are accelerating their trust in cloud solutions, with 50 percent of  respondents confident that cloud solutions are viable for mission critical business applications.

• Scalability remains the top reason for adopting the cloud, with 57 percent of companies identifying it as the most important driver for cloud adoption.  Business agility ranked second among drivers for cloud adoption, with 54 percent of respondents focused on agility.

• Security remains the primary inhibitor to adoption in the burgeoning cloud marketplace with 55 percent of respondents identifying it as a concern, followed by regulatory compliance (38%) and vendor lock-in (32%).

•  Software as a service (SaaS) is currently, and is expected to remain the primary type of cloud investment, with 82 percent of respondents citing it as in use today, and 88 percent expecting to use it five years from now.

•  Platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will see significant growth in the next five years, with PaaS growing from 40 percent to 72 percent and IaaS growing from 51 percent to 66 percent.

• The top 3 areas in which “cloud formations” are coming together are backup and archiving (43 percent), business continuity (25 percent), collaboration tools (22 percent), and big data processing (19 percent).

• Cloud users are shifting sentiments with regard to public vs. hybrid cloud platforms.

              - Currently, 40 percent of respondents are deploying public cloud strategies,

                 with 36 percent emphasizing a hybrid approach.

              - Within five years, hybrid clouds will be the emphasis of 52 percent of 

                 respondents’ Cloud strategies         

• With an increase in trust of the cloud, big data is emerging as a major focus for vendors and end-users alike.

               - 80 percent of respondents identify big data as the most likely sector to be 

            disrupted by cloud computing

        - Vendors identify analytics and big data as the first and second most important   

           cloud service to provide, respectively.

• The majority of respondents (53 percent) believe that cloud computing maintains a lower TCO and creates a less complex IT workflow.

Reference: http://www.nbvp.com/2012-future-cloud-computing-survey-exposes-hottest-trends-cloud-adoption