Cloud use will be commonplace in enterprises by 2022, and a new report from Forrester Research shows how ubiquitous the cloud has become.
According to the report, 94% of US organizations surveyed now use at least one cloud provider. Hybrid Cloud Computing is also common for 84% of respondents, while 75% say they use multiple providers for multi-cloud deployments†
One of the many drivers of the increased use of the cloud in the US is the Covid-19 pandemic† Forrester reported that 41% of purchase influencers at US companies who are prioritizing cloud adoption in their organizations have noted an increased importance of cloud as a result of the pandemic.
The rise of industrial clouds
While the use of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud has increased in recent years, another trend has emerged: the use of industry clouds† Industry clouds are vertically oriented stacks for a particular sector, such as: healthcarefinancial services and government.
“There have been industry-specific offerings for a few years now, but there have been no product-specific announcements until this year,” said Tracy Woo, senior analyst at Forrester Research. ITPro today† “We’ve seen the public cloud market move from the cloud for everything to the cloud for specific use cases.”
Even Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has generally been resistant to vertical-specific focus areas, is now operating in the space, Woo said.
What are the challenges of cloud deployment?
While cloud usage is common, Forrester’s analysis revealed a number of challenges.
“The largest area is not focused on cloud spend,” Woo said. “Many people who use the cloud think the cloud will save them money, but are then surprised when costs are way above their budget allocation†
Another challenge Woo cites is establishing a good security posture and governance framework. It’s easy to start using the cloud with just a credit card, but when you start using cloud at scale, it’s imperative to ensure you can stay secure and improve efficiency while expanding cloud usage, she said.
There are several ways that an organization can measure the effectiveness of using cloud resources.
“The easiest way to do this is to measure cloud spend against the business goals you are achieving,” said Woo. “If you can leverage cloud resources and meet your growth and revenue goals, that’s an effective way to see that the cloud is an effective tool.”
About the author
Sean Michael Kerner is an IT consultant, technology enthusiast and tinkerer. He advises industry and media organizations on technology issues.