Survey Reveals Cloud Computing Trends Coming from Enterprises

With 2014 gone, businesses are set to roll out their 2015 cloud computing playbooks, and a lot of them are going to be focused on emerging open cloud platforms. As is usually true as a new year begins, survey results are appearing that put some metrics on the cloud plans that are set to be put in place.

According to a report from WANTED Analytics: "There are 3.9 million jobs in the U.S. affiliated with cloud computing today with 384,478 in IT alone. The median salary for IT professionals with cloud computing experience is $90,950 and the median salary for positions that pay over $100,000 a year is $116,950." In addition, a new KPMG study, 2014 Cloud Survey Report: Elevating Business in the Cloud, shows that executives are rapidly changing how they think about the cloud.

The KPMG study is done annually and involves responses from C-Level executives. The good news is that 73% of them are seeing improved business performance after implementing cloud-based applications and strategies. And, notably, 35 percent of enterprises adopting cloud computing platforms are interested in business analytics.

That last finding implies that we could see more convergence between the cloud and Big Data tools such as Hadoop.

The KPMG study is available for download here.

The study includes a graphic that shows that driving cost efficiencies is top of mind at many enterprises considering cloud platforms:

IDG Enterprise also came out recently with results from a new survey it did involving 1,672 IT decision-makers, and they show that cloud adoption of all kinds continues apace.

The results showed:

"More than two-thirds (69%) of companies have already made cloud investments. The rest plan to do so within the next three years. Companies appear to be moving steadily: Respondents anticipate their cloud usage will expand, on average, by 38% in the next 18 months. At the end of 2015, companies expect to be operating an average of 53% of their IT environments in the cloud."

Red Hat and other companies have been adamant that hybrid clouds are the wave of the future, and IT managers in IDG Enterprise's survey showed allegiance to public, private and hybrid clouds. "On average, cloud deployments are split almost evenly between public (15%) and private (19%) implementations," the report notes. "Although companies intend to adopt public cloud at a somewhat faster pace than private cloud, private cloud models will continue to have the edge."