Public cloud workloads set to double by 2021

On average, businesses run 27 percent of their workloads and applications in public clouds and expect this figure to nearly double to 48 percent within the next one to two years, according to a new study.

The report from IT marketplace Spiceworks shows 69 percent of businesses believe the flexibility of cloud environments will allow them to more easily adopt emerging technologies such as edge computing, serverless computing, and container technologies.

Around a third of businesses say they plan to adopt these technologies by 2020. Adoption rates are even higher in large enterprises -- those with more than 5,000 employees. For example, by 2020, 65 percent of large enterprises plan to use edge computing and 73 percent plan to use container technologies, up from 32 percent and 39 percent today.

"Our findings indicate many businesses are eager to capitalize on emerging cloud-centric technologies," says Peter Tsai, senior technology analyst at Spiceworks. "This interest creates new opportunities for cloud vendors to provide solutions and services that can help organizations reap the benefits of serverless computing, edge computing, and containers."

However, many businesses still choose to run some workloads and applications fully on-premise, particularly those holding sensitive company information such as database servers (59 percent), identity management systems (57 percent), and ERP systems (46 percent). But even among these businesses, approximately 20 percent are considering moving these workloads to public clouds in the next year.

The study also looks at how public cloud providers are seen among the businesses currently using each brand. The results show AWS narrowly edges out the competition for maximum uptime, best-in-class data security, and value for money, three of the top five most critical purchase consideration factors according to IT decision makers.

Microsoft Azure takes the top spot for compatibility with existing services and ties with AWS for being the most trusted partner. Google Cloud Platform ranks the highest for being simple to manage and an innovative provider. More than a third of organizations say they're open to using smaller, local cloud infrastructure providers.

"In order to retain business, cloud vendors need to be more proactive about combating the factors that could drive their customers to a competitor," adds Tsai. "For example, public cloud vendors can benefit by being transparent with IT decision makers about safeguards they have in place to protect sensitive data customers are storing or considering storing in public clouds."

The full report is available from the Spiceworks site.

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