Recent HyTrust studies show that public cloud service adoptions are accelerating businesses, and growth is not expected to slow any time soon. Eric Chiu, President of HyTrust says that “this critical technological breakthrough has become the foundation of organizations”. Until a few years, there were more concerns about security and skepticism about the process required. However, in the last few years challenges are being overcome, and every function in every industry is being migrated.
The business landscape is full of technological advances that providing tools and services that improve competitive performance, reduce operating costs and improve productivity. Moreover, the spread of mobile and IoT solutions is encouraging business leaders to focus in new directions and implement radical new strategies. With Gartner predictions that 5 million people will have sensitive business information on their smartwatches by 2023, and smartphones and smartwatches will cause so much disruption by 2023 that organizations will need to enforce restrictive policies, the growing impact of technology in business is clear.
With cloud computing applied correctly, most companies surveyed by HyTrust say that cloud computing and software-defined adoption will increase, offering faster implementation and greater tangible benefits and return on investment. Businesses and IT professionals, however, maintain security as their biggest challenge. Because of that, the perceived lack of inadequate or robust security in the cloud and software-defined data centers is considered the biggest obstacle to their adoption. However, 70% of those surveyed believe that security will be a minor obstacle in the coming years. Many others also point to the lack of solutions, interoperability issues, and immaturity of offerings as limitations to cloud adoption.
Migration to the public cloud is particularly evident in technology companies (see here), business and management consulting firms, which are closely followed by emergency services, financial services, information and analysis services, energy, utilities, and education services. However, migration concerns are prevalent with the risk of data breach, the need for security across the infrastructure, effective monitoring and control, as well as visibility. However, 75% of respondents plan to soon move their workloads to the public cloud.
Cloud tools and services are popular among entrepreneurs, and studies by SCORE indicated that 92% use at least one cloud-based solution. The top 5 benefits observed are cost-effectiveness, flexibility, ease of use, improved business agility, and security. Unfortunately, many small business owners are overwhelmed by the number of technologies available, and while most recognize their value, only 29% use a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Security not only concerns large businesses. In fact, 60% of cybercrime attacks are against small businesses. From the SCORE survey only 50% of respondents protect their internet data, less than half have their email secured, and only a fifth have network security encryption. Better data security should be a must for the progress of small businesses.
Virtualization increases the value of server hardware, allowing businesses to do more with less at lower cost. Businesses can reduce energy consumption, IT requirements, and space needs, and spend less time on installation, maintenance, and support.
