More than 45 percent of enterprises surveyed are beyond the pilot phase of cloud deployments, and 32 percent possess a formal cloud computing plan as part of their overall IT and business strategy, said a Microsoft-commissioned study.
On-premises private cloud adoption accounted for 26 percent of on-premises infrastructure spending in 2013, and hosted private cloud is expected to experience the highest rate of growth for off-premises infrastructure, accounting for 32 percent of hosted spending in the next 24 months.
“Hosted private cloud is a gateway to hybrid cloud environments for many customers,” said Marco Limena, vice president, Hosting Service Providers, Microsoft. “We’ve seen significant traction for these environments as our hosting business continues growing at a high rate year-over-year.”
While cloud environments are significantly changing the way businesses operate today, one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of security. As a result, security has emerged as the primary, and potentially most lucrative, cloud opportunity for hosters.
Hosting is now the de facto solution for ‘trusted cloud’ implementations, and customers are willing to pay a premium for assurances. Our research shows that 60 percent of customers would pay their hosting service provider a 26 percent premium on average for security guarantees — and an additional 25 percent are already paying for such services.
Microsoft, which believes in giving customers full flexibility when deploying Cloud technologies, and its alliance with its community of hosting service providers around the world ensures a seamless experience for customers, has added 5,000 new hosting service providers in the past 12 months, making its hosting community the largest of any vendor.
