The adoption of the public cloud continues to increase. More and more companies in various industries are incorporating a public cloud strategy into their long-term IT plan. The shear amount of data being accumulated and stored makes public cloud computing the best option for most companies. According to an article on thewhir.com, “[more than] 90 percent of the world’s data has been generated in the last two years with only 66 percent currently being held in the cloud. Half of enterprises bought as much storage in 2014 as they had accumulated in the history of their business.” Much of this will likely be bought in the public cloud.
Why the public cloud?
A long-term public cloud strategy should focus on the flexibility and agility to quickly adapt to the business’s evolving landscape, and as more and more applications are used, the public cloud will evolve with them. The public cloud is an attractive option for most companies because it can easily scale to the company’s expectations without the need for new capital expenses on hardware purchases, upgrades or refreshes – the cloud provider is responsible for the underlying hardware making the public cloud a cost-effective option. Beyond even the capital spend, when companies move to the cloud, they can reallocate the hundreds or thousands of hours they spend every few years refreshing their hardware. Most teams evaluate multiple vendors, write justifications on why new hardware is needed, plan a change control, migrate their applications and finally securely dispose of their old hardware. All of these activities provide no value creation for a company; this time is spent just keeping the lights on while introducing significant risks.
“Agility, reduction in capital expenditures, and reduced operating expenditures – in almost 100 percent of situations – have been the primary drivers of cloud adoption,” Jim Morrisroe, CEO of Piston Cloud Computing said in an article on thewhir.com. “We also expect to see cloud adoption increase as a result of the recent explosion of big data analytics, mobile, and next-gen web applications development and by line of business innovation.”
Another great reason for utilizing public cloud as a long-term strategy is the security it offers. What was traditionally a weakness for the public cloud; security is now seen as one of its greatest strengths, thanks to the innovations in technology and compliance initiatives.
According to a new IDC Energy Insights survey, “76% of utility respondents recognize that cloud providers can offer better security than that offered by their own organization’s IT security team.” Considering that the utilities industry has generally been very conservative in its adoption of the cloud or changes to any information systems infrastructure, this is a significant indicator that times are changing and that cloud adoption is going to increase in popularity among all industries. Of the survey respondents, “74% indicated that public cloud is their dominant, long-term platform strategy to meet IT needs.”
Expedient is ready to help with any public cloud computing needs or questions. Our public cloud offerings provide the security and peace of mind that comes from knowing your data is being housed within the framework of an enterprise-class data center. Not only do you receive the benefits of our state-of-the-art infrastructure and security, but our on-site staff is available around-the-clock, ensuring that your mission-critical data remains continuously available.
Ken Hill has more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications and information technology industry that led him to his position as Chief Technology Officer of Expedient. Ken has demonstrated throughout his career the ability to manage a broad spectrum of technical environments.
