Enterprises to Spend More on Cloud Services Offerings But Want More Security

Organizations will spend more on cloud services in 2013 but with stricter security requirements, say analysts. Surveys of cloud developments in the Australian market considered to be an early adopter and maturing market reflect wider global trends in cloud services. The latest cloud research identifies a migration to off-premise from on-premise services and new cloud applications as major upcoming trends in Australian cloud services, a market Gartner forecasts to grow 22 percent to over $3 billion in 2013.

One sign of a maturing cloud market is the move to managing IT infrastructure off-premise, observes Matthew Oostveen, head of research at IDC. "It may start incrementally where we see an up take of co-location services, and obviously the co-locations services are being supported by the influx of new data centres in the market place [provided by] NextDC and Macquarie Telecom, which has built new facilities as well."

Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Gedda also sees more organizations choosing off-premise cloud computing services as a service delivery option. In addition, Gedda expects an influx of new cloud applications on the market in 2013 as a result of innovation in application testing and development. "We can expect to see new types of applications delivered out of the cloud, more options for where data is hosted (and the type of infrastructure its hosted on) and more services offering enterprise-grade application hosting," he predicts.

Enterprises can expect a strong offering of cloud services ahead, concurs Deloitte Consulting technology head Robert Hillard. "File sharing, document sharing, collaboration will very quickly gain enterprise strength and much greater support within the enterprise traditional governance."

All segments of the cloud services market will see growth, says Gartner vice president Rolf Jester, who expects business process as a service (BPaaS) and advertising services to compromise a large part of the forecasted $3 billion in cloud spending. In software as a service (SaaS), spending will grow by 28 percent to over $470 million while spending on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will grow 55 percent to reach $385 million.

Accompanying the move off-premise are heightened security fears as enterprise ecosystems expand. A key challenge for cloud vendors and service providers going forward will be fortressing their offerings on a security level. By 2014, 40 percent of enterprises will require proof of independent security testing before buying cloud services, up from one percent today, according to Gartner. (CL) Link