Network Instruments survey of Cisco Live attendees shows more than 70% are implementing cloud computing, yet the same poll shows network engineers share an unclear understanding of the technology.
While network engineers, managers and directors attending Cisco Live in Las Vegas this week can’t come to an agreement on one definition for cloud computing, 71% of 184 network professionals polled at the show reported that they are implementing some form of the technology at their companies.
Network performance management and troubleshooting vendor Network Instruments took the opportunity at Cisco Live this week to get a read on attendees’ understanding and adoption of cloud computing. The poll revealed that the meaning of cloud computing varied widely for attendees, the majority of which reported adopting the technology in some form at their companies.
For the majority (46%) cloud computing was defined as “any IT services accessed via the public Internet.” Others (34%) found the technology to involve computing resources and storage that can be accessed “on-demand.” And about 30% said they believed that “cloud computing pertained to the outsourcing of hosted and management of computing resources to third-party providers.”
Perhaps the various definitions is in part behind the fact that of some 184 network engineers, managers and directors surveyed at the show 71% said their companies had adopted some form of cloud computing. Half of those defined their adoption as some form of private cloud. Forty-six percent identified their adoption as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) implementations such as Salesforce.com or Google Apps. About one-third (32%) reported they had implemented Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) technologies, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, and 16% identified their deployment of cloud computing as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) like Microsoft Azure or Salesforce.com’s Force, according to the Network Instruments’ survey.
Survey respondents reported both positive and potentially negative results from their cloud computing implementations. Nearly two-thirds (64%) said that application availability had improved, and 48% said they experienced a reduction in the costs of managing IT infrastructure.
Yet the survey also brought some technology trouble spots with cloud computing to the surface. For 65%, security of corporate data declined or remained the same, compared to 35% of respondents who reported seeing security improvements. And more than 60% said they experienced no change or encountered increased difficulty in detecting and solving performance problems in their companies’ cloud computing environments.
“With proper planning and tools to ensure visibility from the user to the cloud provider, Cisco Live attendees are successfully deploying cloud services,” said Brad Reinboldt, product marketing manager at Network Instruments, in a statement. “I was a bit surprised by the number of companies lacking tools to detect and troubleshoot cloud performance issues, as they risk running into significant problems that jeopardize any cost savings they may have initially gained.”
Has your company implemented cloud computing? How do you define the technology? Please leave a comment here or e-mail me directly at Denise.Dubie@ca.com.
Do you Tweet? Follow Denise Dubie on Twitter here.
No comments yet.