Yesterday, we looked at the results from Zenoss’s 2010 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Survey, which noted in part, the growing popularity of virtualization solutions and cloud computing services.
The results are echoed in a recent Gartner survey that examines trends in IT expenditure. Gartner surveyed 1587 respondents from 40 countries in order to gauge spending trends. Of those participating in the survey, 484 answered more in-depth questions in regards to their plans for cloud computing.
39% of respondents worldwide said they were allocating IT budget to cloud computing. One-third of the spending on cloud computing is a continuation from the previous budget year, and a further third is new to the budget.
IT Increasingly Turning to External Service Providers
The survey indicates that cloud computing services from external service providers are estimated to comprise 10% of the spending on external IT services. 46% of respondents with budget allocated to cloud computing said they planned to increase the use of services from external providers. And according to Bob Igou, research director at Gartner, this marks “a shift toward the ‘utility’ approach for noncore services and increased investment in core functionality.”
More respondents expected an increase in spending for private cloud implementations for internal use (43%) than those that are for external or public use (32%). On a regional basis, Asia, Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa spent between 40 to 50% of the cloud budget on services from external providers. Latin America was the exception, with a notably larger portion of budgets being spent on developing and implementing private cloud environments.
“Overall, these are healthy investment trends for cloud computing. This is yet another trend that indicates a shift in spending from traditional IT assets such as the data center assets and a move toward assets that are accessed in the cloud,” says Igou. “The trends are good news for IT services providers that have professional services geared to implementing cloud environments and those that deliver cloud services. It is bad news for technology providers and IT services firms that are not investing and gearing up to deliver these new services seeing an increased demand by buyers.”
Photo credits: Flickr user Kevin Dooley
