Trending: Enterprises Move Business-Critical Application to the Cloud

With the first half of 2015 almost behind us, I took the opportunity to speak with Joe Crawford, executive director of cloud solutions engineering and business development, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, to hear his perspectives on the current state of enterprise cloud adoption and what the remainder of the year has in store for the cloud market.

Joe Crawford, Executive Director, Cloud Solutions Engineering and Business Development, Verizon

Joe Crawford: Enterprise cloud has evolved from specific workloads running in the cloud to enterprises looking at a cloud-first approach for all new workloads. The Verizon State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud 2014 report found that 65 percent of enterprises are currently using cloud computing, and forecasted that 71 percent of enterprises expect to implement cloud for external-facing production applications by 2017.

As the technology underpinnings of the cloud have matured, it has become an established delivery platform for application workloads, such as streaming video and big data, and has fundamentally redefined the relevancy of IT to the broader organization. That technology maturation is positively impacting the way enterprise IT leaders collaborate with their lines of business and how they approach their cloud purchasing decisions. Increasingly, organizations are adopting a planned lifecycle approach to the cloud, recognizing that each and every application has its own unique considerations and cloud migration path.

How is the cloud computing market evolving?

Joe Crawford: The market is becoming more fragmented as the industry comes to the realization that it can’t be everything to everybody. We’re seeing significant growth in the enterprise space, working with companies that need secure workloads, predictable performance and support for mission-critical applications. Increasingly, enterprises are evaluating cloud services based on performance as the key differentiator, rather than the underlying technical aspects of the infrastructure which was predominant in previous years.

While companies will continue to leverage the cloud for niche applications, enterprises are looking to put more business-centric applications in the cloud. This approach requires designing cloud-based applications that specifically fit each workload — taking into account geography, security, networking, service management expectations and the ability to quickly deploy the solution to meet rapidly changing business requirements. As a result, a core focus for the remainder of 2015 will be the creation of individual cloud spaces that correspond to the individual needs of a given workload. We’re already working with enterprises in this respect, helping to directly align the capabilities of their cloud infrastructure and surrounding services, such as management and onboarding, to each workload..

What’s the biggest change we’ll see in 2015? Is the public vs. private debate still relevant?

Joe Crawford: This year we are seeing many enterprises mature in their approach to the cloud and adopt their 2.0 version of cloud workloads. This means clients are more educated on the market and what is offered, thereby upping the expectations of cloud service providers. This also means they are looking for a combination of private and public cloud offerings depending on their specific workload requirements. The hybrid approach is key for enterprises as they look to expand more workloads to a cloud environment.

Enterprises are now focused on the creation of workload-focused cloud environments that meet organizational requirements through an alignment of IT objectives with business strategies. We fully expect this trend to accelerate through the remainder of 2015 and beyond. The key to success is creating a tailored solution that considers each workload’s security, agility, elasticity and scalability requirements. This ability to holistically analyze a business imperative and find a corresponding solution negates a discussion of public vs. private vs. hybrid cloud. The goal then rightly becomes identifying what type of cloud best supports a given enterprise workload by providing the right level of networking, security, flexibility and cost to support the overall business and its objectives..

What cloud solutions should enterprises consider in the coming year?

Joe Crawford: There will be an increased focus on the fundamental technology elements that enable the Internet of Things – cloud network and security. According to the “State of the Market: The Internet of Things 2015,” a report issued by Verizon in February, there were an estimated 1.2 billion business-to-business IoT connections in 2014 — up from less than one billion in 2011. That number is expected to grow to more than 5 billion over the next five years.

Networking and cloud computing are at the heart of IoT, comprising half of the key ingredients that make IoT possible. (Security and infrastructure are the other two.) This is not surprising considering IoT needs reliable, flexible network connections (both wireless and wireline) to move all the collected data and information from devices back to a central processing hub, without the need for human intervention. Similarly, cloud computing provides the flexibility, scale and security to host applications and store data.

Read “Matching Applications to the Right Cloud” for more information about choosing the proper cloud for your enterprise organization.