IBM report predicts continued cloud growth

Cloud adoption continues to grow, with three quarters of IT
professionals surveyed believing their organisation will build a cloud
infrastructure over the next two years, according to the results of IBM’s 2011
Tech Trends report.

The report is based on the input of more than 4,000 IT professionals and
developers across 93 countries and 25 different industries.

This year’s survey examined how businesses are adopting and planning to
use mobile computing, cloud computing, social business and business analytics.
The results offer a glimpse into the future and provide IT professionals with a
clear roadmap of the technologies and platforms that will be in the greatest
demand in the coming year.

This year’s report uncovered a number of key trends in cloud adoption,
including:

Cloud Adoption Will Grow – 75% of respondents believe that over the next two
years their organisations will begin to build cloud infrastructure

Cloud Has a Growing Link to Mobile – 51% of respondents see the adoption of
cloud as part of their organisation’s mobile strategy

Building Cloud Applications Will Outpace Virtualization as the Top Cloud
Activity – 25% of respondents plan to implement cloud computing by developing
new applications vs. 24% for storage and virtualization

Flexibility and Scalability Are Top Motivators for Cloud Adoption – 58% of
respondents cite flexibility and scalability as top motivator for cloud
adoption, followed by reducing operating expenses (45%), efficiency (42%),
reducing capital costs (40%) and redundancy and disaster recovery (35%)

As cloud computing becomes more established in the technical landscape,
it appears that an increasing numbers of organisations are taking advantage of
the cloud, not only to build infrastructure but also to build and deliver new
applications, services and business models, many of which are also tied to
their mobile applications.

“The results are clear. Mobile computing, cloud computing, social
business and business analytics have gone beyond niche status and are now part
of any modern organization’s core IT focus,” said Jim Corgel, general manager
ISV and Developer Relations, IBM. “IT professionals who can develop the skills
needed to work across these technologies will be ready to meet growing business
demand in the coming years.”

The complete IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report and the data gathered as part
of the survey are available at: www.ibm.com/developerworks/techtrendsreport

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