Cloud IaaS and DaaS Adoption Create Challenges and Opportunities for MSPs

New research on cloud services adoption signals good news overall for managed service providers (MSPs). According to a recent survey from Redshift Research on behalf of Time Warner company NaviSite, cloud adoption is growing in the enterprise, even though organizations have concerns about safety and compliance.

Those concerns haven’t stopped companies of all sizes from adopting some type of cloud services, and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is leading the market as the main driver for adoption with one-third of U.S. respondents migrating 50 to 70 percent of their IT infrastructure to the cloud. This migration has been influenced by a growing confidence in IaaS as well as the increased prevalence of private and hybrid cloud services. Decision makers are also influenced by improved uptime and reliability as well as better overall service levels.

NaviSite also found the enterprise is rapidly adopting virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) to meet increasing worker demands for BYOD and mobility. Of U.S. respondents, 25 percent stated that securing corporate data and being able to offer a BYOD policy to employees were their main considerations when looking at DaaS solutions. In somewhat alarming news, 56 percent of those surveyed do not have an existing BYOD policy but they do consider establishing one a priority over the next year.

"The [cloud] discussion within enterprises has shifted past the initial strategy to the ground-work of driving mainstream adoption and achieving the associated benefits around agility, cost, performance, and security," said Sumeet Sabharwal, general manager, NaviSite. “Organizations are not only moving their existing mission-critical production workloads to an IaaS model but are also standing up their next-generation of applications directly on the cloud. While enterprises have made significant headway towards realizing a cloud-enabled IT infrastructure, the survey does highlight pressing challenges around security, compliance and enabling workforce mobility that continue to remain top-of-mind for IT decision makers."

Those challenges and concerns create opportunities for MSPs, and experienced service providers can offer comprehensive security and implementation plans.