Last year, Intel published an epic report on the State of the Cloud, based on interviews with over 1,200 professionals working across cloud technologies.

There seems to be no end in sight for the growth of enterprise cloud computing and communications, whether the cloud is being consumed Software as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Security as-a-Service, and “Everything” as-a-Service.

Whether leveraging public, private or hybrid clouds, enterprises are increasingly moving to the cloud, and breaking down legacy barriers including the ever-present compliance issues associated with using the cloud.

Even the most traditional IT and operations leaders can no longer fight against the rising tide, as the natural benefits (simplicity, elasticity, scale and economics) are well documented. That said, arguments can be made that the current state of the cloud leaves enterprises vulnerable to attacks and other risks including loss of business productivity when important links in connectivity chains fail.

Cloud networks are only as strong as their weakest link, and that is why the interconnection of multiple clouds is on the minds of so many responsible for ensuring their digital enterprises are connected securely and on highly resilient IP networks.

The Intel state of the cloud report explores “the myth and reality of the biggest cloud security issues facing enterprises and look at the effectiveness of investments in cloud security technologies, including encryption, data loss prevention, and more,” and examines “how enterprises are tackling the challenge of shadow IT-procured cloud while enabling employees and departments to get access to the services they need with the necessary security in place to protect corporate information.”

It’s a great read.

State of the Cloud: Key Findings

According to Intel’s survey, private cloud is currently the most dominant cloud model in the enterprise, with 51% of their cloud deployment comprised of private cloud. Public cloud makes up 30%, and hybrid cloud accounts for 19% of enterprise cloud deployments. When we look at how many months it will take until 80% of an organization’s IT budget will be allocated to cloud computing services, the time frame for the private cloud shrinks to just 15 months.

state of the cloud intel netfoundry

Another highlight from the report is that the majority of organizations are planning on investing in all cloud service models with the highest percentage (81%) for IaaS, compared to only 60% for SaaS.This is closely followed by Security-as-a-Service (79%), and even planned investment in PaaS (69%) is higher than SaaS.

The report also covers the risks of “shadow IT” and independent business units using the public cloud to store and share documents, for example, or who go to public cloud services, like Amazon and Azure, to develop, test and even manage business applications, outside the purview of the traditional IT operations processes.

The report’s findings back up Gartner’s predictions regarding Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs), poised for growth in order to solve for the “wild west” of cloud deployments, whether official or unofficial, in large enterprises.

Gartner predicts that, “by 2020, 85% of large enterprises will use a cloud access security broker product for their cloud services, which is up from fewer than 5% today”. Despite the fact that CASBs are a relatively new service, 36% of organizations are are already using such services to protect their SaaS applications, and 32% are using these services to monitor shadow IT-procured cloud implementations. 24% of enterprises also plan to invest in a CASB-as-a-Service in the future.

NetFoundry’s multicloud connect platform for enterprises enables them to not only take advantage of the cloud, but extend their advantages to the edge of the Internet – yes, the public Internet, transformed into ultra-secure, high performance private networks, spun up and managed with software, and designed to support specific business applications used by distributed teams.

These tools bring the IT and DevOps teams together, enabling private cloud-based networks to be created without the usual friction associated with traditional provisioning, private lines, MPLS, or VPN networks.

This platform works hand-in-glove with cloud brokerage programs, making it as easy to spin up a network as it is to spin up a Virtual Machine (VM), with the same levels of policy applied.

The Net Result

All the advantages of cloud, with none of the risks, and with management tools including data analytics which strengthen oversight, even in the most regulated industries (financial, healthcare, and more).

We’re proud to work with Intel on a number of fronts, and look forward to our continuing innovation with them as part of our growing technology ecosystem.

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