AFCOM, the data center industry group, has just released its 2009/2010 data center trends survey that shows cloud computing has very limited adoption within large data centers, despite it being high on the watchlist for the managers of those data centers.
In this survey, which questioned the managers of large-scale data centers worldwide, a scant 15 percent of have implemented cloud computing, despite almost three fourths of them having virtualized some of their servers according to the latest survey from a data center industry group. AFCOM interviewed data center managers to ascertain what they view as the major issues and opportunities for the industry. And folks, it ain’t the cloud.
The bullets below indicate the percentage of respondents who reported implementing the following technologies:
- Cloud Computing 14.90%
- Cluster Computing 50.00%
- Virtual Processing 72.90%
- Web Applications 70.40%
- Automation 54.80%
Cloud computing is tracking significantly lower as a utilized technology within data centers when compared to the general IT industry. Recent statistics I wrote about showed 56% of respondents admitting some adoption of cloud computing.
What we’re seeing here is the higher maturity and marketplace acceptance of SaaS as opposed to infrastructure cloud computing – data center decision makers are notoriously conservative and much less likely to dabble with a cloud offering that hey deem to be unproven.
This fact is borne out by another statistic from the report looking at what technologies data centers have considered but NOT implemented:
- Cloud Computing 46.30%
- Cluster Computing 11.70%
- Virtual Processing 9.60%
- Web Applications 4.80%
- Automation 15.40%
What is really interesting is that close to 50% of these same ultra-cautious data center staff have investigated cloud computing. When seen in light of the very low numbers investigating other data center technologies, it shows just how pervasive the concept of cloud computing is becoming.
With large numbers of people spending lots of energy investigating the cloud, and large numbers of vendors building tools to help traditional data centers move towards cloud use, the scene is set for rapidly escalating cloud adoption at the data center level.
