Data centre budgets and public cloud adoption on the rise, says report

Uptime Institute research reveals 77 per cent of businesses saw data centre budgets grow in the last year

Data centre budgets are growing in businesses across the globe, with public cloud adoption on the rise as private cloud is on the decline, according to newly released research.

The Uptime Institute's report, The Data Centre Industry Survey 2013, suggests that data centre budgets are growing overall, with over three quarters of third party data centre providers receiving large (more than 10 per cent) budget increases. That compares with similar buget increases for under half (47 per cent) of enterprise-owned data centres.

"Data centre budgets are growing overall, but the vast majority of growth is occurring in the third party providers, reflecting a shift in spending away from enterprise-owned data centres and toward outsourced options," said Matt Stansberry, Uptime Institute director of content and publications.

"This isn't the end of the enterprise-owned data centre, but it should serve as a wakeup call. Going forward, enterprise data centre managers will need to be able to collect cost and performance data, and articulate their value to the business in order to compete with third-party offerings," he added.

The survey also reports that global adoption of public cloud computing is on the rise, with 28 per cent of organisations embracing it in 2013, up three per cent on the previous year. The biggest jump came between 2011 and 2012 when public cloud adoption jumped from just two per cent to 25 per cent. The report also suggests that it's large organisations which are more likely to adopt a public cloud solution.

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, large companies are twice as likely to deploy public cloud versus smaller data centre operators: around 40 per cent adoption for companies managing over 5,000 servers versus 22 per cent for companies managing under 1,000," the Uptime Institute report said.

Meanwhile, according to the survey, private cloud adoption dropped, with 44 per cent deployment this year, compared with 49 per cent in 2012. The number of businesses planning to implement a private cloud solution dropped from 27 per cent to just a quarter in the same period.

Factors driving the increased enthusiasm for public cloud include speed of deployment, scalability and potential cost savings.

However, many still remain wary about moving to the public cloud, with security worries and a lack of skills required for adoption signified as some of the reasons why some are still reluctant to make the jump.

Uptime Institute's research was gathered by consulting a thousand data centre operators, IT managers and senior executives from around the world.

Next month, Computing is hosting its own Data Centre Summit. The summit will explore how CIOs are successfully navigating the architectural and strategic challenges around the data centre. It is free to attend for senior IT professionals from end user organisations.

Click here for more information about the Computing Data Centre Summit 2013.