Cloud computing will increase spending on server hardware, according to analyst house IDC.
The firm predicts that server hardware revenue for public cloud computing will grow from $582m in 2009 to $718m in 2014. Server revenue for the larger private cloud market will grow from $2.6bn to $5.7bn in the same time period, IDC added.
"Many IT decision makers are seriously considering cloud computing as a way to dramatically simplify their sprawling virtual and physical infrastructure," said Katherine Broderick, research analyst for Enterprise Platforms and Data Centre Trends at IDC. "However, there is still some lingering apprehension over issues like integration, availability, security and costs. These concerns, and how they are addressed by IT vendors, will continue to guide the adoption of cloud computing over the next several years."
The firm also predicts that public cloud will see less take up than private clouds and that they will be less enterprise-focused than private clouds.
While IDC may seem confident about the future of cloud computing, Daniel Fried, managing director EMEA for Veeam said that managing the virtual infrastructure will prove to be a challenge for a lot of enterprises.
"Even within the limited confines of a single organisation’s IT infrastructure, virtual environments can quickly sprawl out of control. Organisations are beginning to tame these internal virtual environments, but the arrival of cloud computing doesn’t just repeat the problems that virtualisation creates: it magnifies them, allowing them free reign across a much broader infrastructure than before," he said.
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"For example, in a closed IT environment any sprawl will always be constrained by the environment’s own physical limits," Fried continued. "In the cloud, where the environment is potentially infinite, virtual machines can proliferate to such an extent that keeping track becomes utterly impossible and the quality and reliability of the infrastructure cannot be guaranteed."
