"This study confirms that large enterprises are exploring the benefits of the cloud, and are looking to expand from basic services like collaboration to more complex Infrastructure and Platform cloud services," said Adam Famularo (pictured), general manager, Cloud Computing Business, CA Technologies, as the results were announced recently of a new study of North American and European IT professionals conducted by Management Insight on behalf of CA Technologies.

Cloud Computing is "coming of age" in large enterprises, the report confirms. More than 80 percent of enterprises and 92 percent of the largest enterprises have at least one cloud service; 53 percent of IT implementers indicate having more than six cloud services.

"It validates a trend we predicted, that IT executives are rapidly becoming orchestrators of an IT supply chain made up of internal and external services," commented Famularo, adding:

"With this shift comes a growing need for sophisticated management and security, allowing enterprises to change how they think about IT to reap the full rewards that cloud computing offers - agility, efficiency and scalability."

Management Insight's researchers surveyed IT professionals in organizations with 1,000 to 10,000-plus employees.

The results indicate a shift toward approaching IT using "cloud thinking," accelerating the uses of cloud computing and helping to align IT decision makers and implementers around common goals of efficiency, flexibility and scalability. The virtualization efforts by enterprises are also contributing to broader interest in cloud computing.

Here is what the report concludes about the private/public cloud issue:

Adoption Polarizes Around Public and Private Clouds

When asked to share their viewpoints on drivers and barriers to the adoption of public and private clouds, respondents cite cost as a driver and barrier, suggesting the true impact and relevance of "cost savings" is still unresolved.

Drivers of public cloud adoption also cite resource efficiencies, flexibility and servicing global users as key drivers. Deterrents include security, compliance, internal resistance and the perception that public clouds are not suitable for some business applications.

Cost and security also confound private cloud adoption, with respondents citing them as both drivers and barriers. Additional drivers include scalability, flexibility and manageability, while complexity, availability and reliability, and slow adoption of new technology are seen as deterrents.

Survey participants also provided input on advocates and opponents of cloud computing within their organizations. Senior management (C-level and senior IT executives) are the primary advocates for public clouds, while those with more day-to-day responsibilities over virtualization and servers are seen as the leading private cloud advocates (32 percent of directors of IT operations or senior data center management, 31 percent of virtualization team, 30 percent of server management team). Not surprisingly, the security team topped the list as the primary opponent for both public and private clouds (44 percent and 27 percent respectively), with business unit leaders/managers sharing that attitude (23 percent and 18 percent respectively).

For more details and to learn more about the survey, download a copy of "The Arrival of 'Cloud Thinking': How and Why Cloud Computing Has Come of Age In Large Enterprises" here.

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