451 Research Predicts Major Move to Cloud by 2018

It’s amazing how quickly people adapt to new technologies. Just look at the cloud, for instance. When the cloud was first introduced, everyone was a bit skeptical about using it to store their valued information, with many questioning what exactly it meant to have their documents “floating around in the cloud somewhere.” Well, people have clearly gotten over these fears regarding security and privacy, according to technology research firm 451 Research (News - Alert). In fact, the organization predicts that within two years the majority of enterprises will be running their workloads in the cloud.

The firm surveyed more than 1,200 IT professionals worldwide then combined that information with separate interviews done with senior IT buyers and IT executives. Their research indicates that business executives have gained confidence in the safety of the cloud thanks to their successful experiences thus far. Presently, companies are increasingly using the cloud to store their information and services, and have faith that they will not get lost. Supporting this growth in cloud confidence, the study found that 38 percent of enterprises said they have cloud-first policies, which means that they at least consider, if not prioritize, the cloud for all possible deployments.

Thirty-eight percent of businesses prioritizing the cloud is a drastic increase from previous numbers. That’s why 451 Research is predicting that the level of enterprise workloads in the cloud is expected to go from 41 percent today to 60 percent by mid-2018. Aside from growing confidence, company mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, hardware buys and software upgrades are all encouraging companies to move to the cloud, thus making this jump in percentages plausible.

Given all of these factors, it’s no wonder that the cloud is predicted to become even more popular. Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, is not at all surprised by these forecasts, saying, “The technology, which allows painless allocation of resources and well-automated provisioning, is suitable for virtually all workloads in all situations.” He continued on to say, “It just makes things work better. And while there's some transitioning required to put current workloads on a cloud, it's not really that much. So companies will be migrating workloads to the cloud whether that cloud is on-premise, in a managed service provider data center or in a public cloud data center.”

If 451 Research proves to be correct in their predictions, the cloud could become an even bigger player in your company than it already is. Gottheil seems to think that moving to the cloud is the most logical course of action. As always, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.