In India, cloud services revenue will have a five-year projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.2 percent from 2012 through 2017 across all segments of the cloud computing market, Gartner said.
Among this, segments such as software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) have even higher projected CAGR growth rates of 34.4 percent and 39.8 percent.
Ed Anderson, research director at Gartner, said, “Cloud computing continues to grow at rates much higher than IT spending generally. Growth in cloud services is being driven by new IT computing scenarios being deployed using cloud models, as well as the migration of traditional IT services to cloud service alternatives.”
Gartner also said the year 2016 will be a defining year for cloud as private cloud begins to give way to hybrid cloud, and nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017.
“Virtualization, service orientation and the Internet have converged to sponsor a phenomenon that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they’ll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models,” said Chris Howard, research vice president at Gartner.
“Services delivered through the cloud will foster an economy based on delivery and consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management,” Howard said.
Private cloud gets a lot of attention and is today the most popular form of cloud across various sectors. However, private cloud is not appropriate for all services and, while the majority of midsize and large enterprises will deploy private cloud services over the next few years, private cloud will only be used for specific services.
As enterprises build their cloud computing strategy, the program should be broken down into two primary IT centric work streams, two supporting IT work streams and a strategic business work stream. The two primary work streams are: the enterprise as a consumer of cloud services, and the enterprise as a provider of cloud services.
When the enterprise is a consumer, the focus is on the IT-related capabilities delivered as a service. The main goal is determining if, when, where, how and why cloud services should be used. The hardware and software used to implement the service are handled by the service provider and are not a concern of the consumer.
When the enterprise is a provider (e.g., building a private cloud) the focus shifts. Now the hardware, software and processes used to implement a cloud service are a primary focus. Service consumption only enters the equation to the extent a cloud service is used as part of the supply chain to develop and deliver the cloud service.
“Using global-class thinking to address global-class problems, the focus should always be outward, not inward in adopting cloud computing,” said Howard. “As discussed, adoption of cloud computing happens in stages. The types of applications and workloads to be moved can indicate which stage of adoption is most appropriate.”
