There is a significant gap in public cloud infrastructure concerns between the cloud-wise, organizations that are currently using cloud services, and the cloud-wary, organizations that are not using cloud services and have no near-term plans to do so, according to survey conducted by Internap Network Services.
Some key findings:
- A majority of the cloud-wary (40%) cited cloud security as a concern, whereas only 15% of the cloud-wise cited security as a challenge they’ve encountered.
- Conversely, the top cloud challenges encountered by cloud-wise organizations were performance (30%) and cost at scale (28%), followed by reliability (22%), compliance (16%), security (15%) and limited configurations (15%).
- 59% of respondents hosting big data applications in the cloud cited performance challenges.
- 66% of respondents cited virtualization as a defining characteristic of a public cloud, even though public clouds do not require virtualization.
- 63% of respondents said a bare-metal cloud would appeal to them. Most of these (73%) cited the “higher performance of dedicated servers” as the reason, and 35% said they would prefer a bare-metal cloud over a virtual cloud.
The survey, which polled nearly 250 Internet infrastructure decision makers globally, also sheds light on new challenges for organizations as they operate fast, big data applications in the cloud and reveals the common misconception that virtualization is a required characteristic of public clouds.
“The survey data clearly indicates that big data applications – such as those that enable personalization and targeting through customer insights, social analytics and location mapping – are pushing the performance limits of virtual public cloud environments at price-points that don’t make business sense,” said Gopala Tumuluri, vice president of hosted services at Internap. “Performance and price are primary selection criteria for organizations choosing a public cloud provider. Yet, ironically, the top challenges organizations continue to face with their existing public cloud services are performance- and price-related.”
