AMD Survey Shows Cloud Computing 'Maturing Rapidly'

A survey by semiconductor maker AMD shows that the adoption of cloud computing is "maturing rapidly" as businesses and other enterprises are developing more in-house cloud expertise, putting more valuable business data in the cloud and quantifying the value to the business of adopting cloud computing strategies. Also, close to half of survey respondents said that they consider cloud computing to be a strategic shift in IT policy that they are taking within their organization.

More than 1,500 respondents from companies with 100 or more employees took part in an online AMD survey this past March about their cloud experience. About 1,000 of the respondents were from the United States; 259 were from China, India and Singapore; and 254 were from the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

According to the survey, 42% of respondents are using cloud in one form or another, including to host data (13%), to host applications (13%) or both (16%). Another 32% of the sample are investigating the use of cloud. That tells Margaret Lewis, VP of product marketing for AMD, that businesses understand the fundamentals of cloud computing and are interested in moving forward with adoption.

"It isn’t, 'What is the cloud?' and basic definitions; it sounds like, 'We’re starting to get that under our belts,'" Lewis says. "I think the education is around, 'How do you make the cloud work for you?'"

More to the point, the survey shows that the business value of cloud computing isn’t just theoretical for these companies; it’s proven.

Sixty-four percent of small companies (with one to 499 employees) and 57% of large companies (with 500 or more employees) "are already seeing business value" to cloud computing, according to the survey. The top five business values they’ve documented are: hardware cost savings (52%); flexibility (51%); increased efficiency (48%); space savings (43%); and better access to up-to-date technology (40%).Another sign of the maturity of cloud adoption is that 63% of companies adopting cloud computing put data worth $250,000 or more in cloud environments, a sign of confidence in the security of cloud environments.

Also interesting is the fact that 75% of respondents using cloud computing say that they have the IT expertise in-house to do cloud computing, and they tend to be at smaller companies rather than large ones, says Lewis.

"In a larger IT organization, you have a lot of status quo already. You have your infrastructure in place, and you have a lot of people trained on that infrastructure. And to make a change is a serious consideration," she says. "Smaller organizations have some of the agility and flexibility that larger companies don’t have, and are maybe more willing to look at alternative capabilities."

Lastly, the survey illustrates that the wisdom of adopting cloud computing depends on the workload. Respondents say the workloads best suited to cloud computing are email (37%), finance/accounting (35%) and web serving (31%). Those workloads least suited to cloud were back office functions (25%), production and manufacturing (23%) and enterprise resource planning (19%).

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