In preparation for the upcoming IEEE Cloud 2014 Event beginning on June 27th, TechNavio analysts have put together a variety of information on the Hybrid Cloud Market, all of which can be found on our Cloud Computing Event Page.
But first, we will highlight all of the important factors influencing the Hybrid Cloud Market during the forecast period:
Hybrid Cloud Market Growth
The Global Hybrid Cloud Market is growing at an impressive rate and is expected to grow at a whopping CAGR of 30.16 percent from 2013-2018.
Currently, the market is in the growing stage, but hybrid cloud computing is likely to be widely adopted by enterprises in the coming years. In fact, it is expected that nearly half of large organizations will have hybrid cloud deployments by 2017. Hybrid cloud is a technology that uses features of both public and private clouds. Sensitive data is retained on the private cloud whereas shared data is available on a public platform.
What is Driving Demand for Hybrid Cloud Solutions?
In the current business environment, enterprises are competing heavily to meet constantly changing global business dynamics. Most enterprises view IT as a tool for quick sustainable business success; but, at the same time, constantly rising IT costs are becoming a major concern and cost cutting is becoming the current business objective of enterprises. Hybrid cloud has reformed the IT industry and encouraged enterprises of all sizes to implement advanced technologies in computing at a lower cost.
In addition, hybrid cloud computing has gained in importance in the marketplace because of modern IT infrastructure such as open-source software, open standards, open application programming interface, open clouds, and open data. Hybrid cloud computing enables enterprises to have better alignment with the needs of businesses and provides operational benefits across various cloud models.
Enterprises are giving prominence to the adoption of the hybrid cloud as it offers cost savings, more efficient use of IT resources, and increased workload scalability. The major benefit it offers to enterprises is its flexibility and it allows enterprises to take advantage of the scalability and cost effectiveness that the public cloud computing environment offers in combination with private cloud computing.
Why are some Enterprises Hesitant to Adopt Hybrid Cloud Solutions?
TechNavio analysts recently conducted a survey, in which they asked a variety of different cloud computing experts what they thought the biggest concerns were for enterprises looking to adopt a hybrid cloud system.
62 percent of respondents felt that the potential security risks were still too great to consider adopting a hybrid cloud solution. Although hybrid cloud solutions have a number of security measures in place, there is always the concern that data will not be properly allocated between public and private clouds.
Furthermore, many IT enterprises are doubtful about shifting their applications and data over to hybrid cloud service providers because they are concerned that the service provider won’t be able to deliver continuous service of their business-critical applications.
Enterprises are looking for the assurance that the hybrid cloud service is architected for high availability. Cloud service providers need to improve their existing data disaster recovery programs by duplicating data across geographically distributed servers, which reduces the chances of data loss. In addition, hybrid cloud strategy can offer a better degree of business continuity by housing data in onsite servers and storage devices.
What Types of Hybrid Cloud Solutions are Available?
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
This model provides hardware access to enterprises requiring hardware such as servers, storage, networking components, and high-performance computing. Enterprises access the components to manipulate the huge amount of data present online and derive the required results. This model also includes the delivery of OS and virtualization technology to manage resources. It is the most cost-effective model because it offers end-users basic computing or storage capability. Leading vendors that provide IaaS are Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and Rackspace Cloud Servers.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
This model provides a computing platform and software development platform for application service providers. Using the platform, applications can be easily developed for end-users and deployed. The configuration settings and platform-independent execution of the applications are also facilitated by the platform service providers. Leading players in PaaS are Google Application Engine and Microsoft Azure.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
This is a software delivery model that provides software on demand for enterprises. It combines both IaaS and PaaS delivery models. The data related to the software is centrally stored on the server and access is given to end-users as and when required. End-users access the applications through their clients which are connected to the server using the internet.
Hybrid Cloud Software-as-a-Service
One of the most important trends in cloud computing is the availability of hybrid clouds from service providers. In fact, when TechNavio analysts asked survey respondents how beneficial they thought Hybrid Cloud SaaS would be, the majority (especially those in medium-sized enterprises) believe that it
will be extremely beneficial or highly beneficial.
For instance, Fujitsu offers such hybrid cloud service based on Microsoft Windows Azure, which enables applications and systems to be interoperable. The service is offered for different scenarios, including when a business needs extra resources in the public cloud to support peak workloads. The hybrid cloud service offered by Fujitsu also addresses the issue of enterprises relying on multiple cloud vendors.
Looking for more information on Hybrid Cloud?
Stay tuned for our post tomorrow about how Hybrid Cloud Solutions are expected to penetrate the market by sector (including market share) and how much Hybrid Cloud SaaS will contribute to market growth!
