Public cloud future jeopardised as private takes over

In the future, public cloud services are likely to be used only for very specific workloads and applications, as the use of public cloud is declining.

As the prices between public and private cloud services narrow, Verizon‘s ‘State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud Report 2016’ has revealed that as of next year, the private cloud will cease to be a luxury product only available to larger enterprises.

This is due to the fact that the technology has advanced, with starting costs and other barriers to entry for private cloud lowered, making it more widely accessible to those without larger budgets.

The company has found that 27% of businesses are already using the private cloud and 17% have plans to implement it.

Also next year, the firm also predicts enterprises will overcome cloud-phobia as reliability and security are proving to be far less of a concern than they once were with cloud.

Verizon has found that 87% of businesses think cloud is at least as reliable as on-premises infrastructure and 40% say it is at least as secure.

87% of businesses are now using the cloud for mission-critical workloads, up from 71% last year and 60% in 2013, according to 2013, 2014 and 2015’s reports.

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The document also reveals that cloud is more than just about efficiency and agility, as it is supporting business transformation.

69% of businesses said that cloud has enabled them to significantly re-engineer one or more business processes, whilst 37% said they have successfully used cloud to adapt their business model.

A wide range of choice within the cloud market is also creating a trend in this space, which means businesses are building multi-cloud strategies. 93% of organisations are using two providers or more, and 26% are using more than ten providers.

Ryan Shuttleworth, cloud chief technology officer for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, said: "Companies are using cloud technologies to create new customer experiences, reengineer their business processes, find new opportunities to grow and manage risk and compliance measures."