Cloud Deployment Challenges

To ensure that the money and resources allocated to private cloud are well spent, addressing the requirements of business leaders and their teams is the most important challenge that IT organizations face today.

According to IDC, annual spending by enterprises on IT infrastructure hardware (server, storage, and network) to build and maintain private clouds in their own datacenters will rise from $12.5 billion in 2015 to $20.3 billion in 2020. Add in spending on cloud and application software, as well as on the IT staff resources required to maintain and extend these clouds, and spending levels are considerably higher (see Figure 1).

Fig 1

Worldwide Cloud and Traditional IT Infrastructure Hardware Spending, 2015–2020

($Billions)

12.5

67.2

13.9

64.5

15.4

63.4

17.2

63.5

18.8

62.9

20.3

62.8

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Private cloud

Traditional IT

Notes:
IT infrastructure hardware includes server, storage, and datacenter network hardware.

Private cloud and traditional IT includes spending for on-premise and off-premise (hosted private cloud, managed service, and outsourced) hardware.

Source: IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, 4Q15

In today’s datacenter, cloud isn’t just about a specific product portfolio or service delivery model, however. Developers and business leaders expect their IT teams to automate the provisioning of IT resources for mobile and analytic workloads while also achieving maximum reuse of assets as applications evolve. Cloud reflects an approach to application design, deployment, and delivery that allows organizations to get more effective use out of their compute and data assets.

To ensure that the money and resources allocated to private cloud are well spent, addressing the requirements of business leaders and their teams is the most important challenge that IT organizations face today. Unfortunately, limitations in existing infrastructure solutions and IT operations processes make it very hard for enterprises to build and run sustainable clouds in their datacenters.