Hybrid IT helps lift cloud computing to mainstream adoption

Cloud computing's ascent to mainstream adoption is being fueled by organisations turning existing on-premise technology into Hybrid cloud deployments, according to the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).

A recent CIF survey, which polled 250 senior IT and business decision makers in June, found that 78% of UK businesses are using at least one-cloud based service. Moreover, the majority (85%) of organisations are deploying using on-premise servers or data centres.

In a statement, CIF noted that the "existence of on-site technology is a direct influence on the evolution of IT strategy based on historical investment", and that "the co-existence of on-premise and cloud services by nature leads to a Hybrid IT environment for the majority of organisations."

Large enterprises had the highest rates of cloud adoption at just over 80%, compared with 75% for organisations with 200 or fewer employees, followed by the public sector at 65%.

One for all

Alex Hilton, CEO at CIF, reckons that 90% of all UK businesses will be using at least one cloud service by the end of 2015, which will be partly driven by Microsoft ending support for Windows Server 2003 in July 2015.

He said: "We can also predict that 10 per cent of businesses will likely report a primary Cloud-based IT strategy, 10 per cent will remain entirely on-premise and 80 per cent will have a Hybrid IT environment.

"This means that nine out of 10 companies will continue to invest in on-premise IT alongside and integrated with Cloud solutions. In other words we are in fact seeing the normalisation of Cloud in the Hybrid IT market."

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