Growth in public cloud market: VMware among industry leaders

Numerous cloud markets are seeing growth recently, including the public cloud sector in particular. A public cloud can offer a wide range of advantages for enterprises, especially as users become more familiar with these type of solutions.

Public cloud market growth

According to a 2015 study from IDC, the public cloud market is poised for considerable growth this year. Researchers predict that the market will reach a value of $70 billion by the end of the year, thanks to increasing adoption across a number of industry verticals.

Currently, deployments in the manufacturing, banking, professional services and retail sectors account for 45 percent of total market spend. Many of the organizations in these sectors saw industry-specific benefits from their use of the public cloud, including, for example, increased efficiency in processing and improved customer retention in retail.

“The major opportunities for cloud within verticals come from the development of intelligent industry solutions, which are built on top of a new platform that includes cloud as well as big data and analytics, mobile and social,” IDC stated in a press release.

Eileen Smith, IDC Global Technology and Research Group program manager, noted that in this environment, it’s important for both vendors and enterprise consumers to understand the specific benefits that help drive public cloud success, as well as the barriers these organizations face.

Benefits abound

While certain industries reap more sector-specific advantages, the public cloud also provides more general benefits companies can enjoy no matter what vertical they operate within. These include:

• Familiarity: Even organizations that have yet to deploy a public cloud solution of their own have more than likely already used a system of this kind. ITProPortal contributor Antony Savvas pointed out that email, social media and general Web browsing are all made possible through the public cloud.
• Pricing continues to drop: While cost savings has been a touted benefit of public clouds from the get-go, vendors have been reducing their prices even further in recent months. Data Informed contributor David Zimmerman reported that one top cloud vendor decreased its prices 22 percent last year, helping public cloud users save even more than before.
• An ideal temporary solution: In addition to being beneficial in the long term, Savvas noted that public cloud environments are also incredibly well-suited for seasonal or one-time initiatives.”By delivering such economies of scale, public cloud systems are suitable for organizations needing temporary, added data capacity at peak times or for special ad hoc projects,” Savvas wrote. “The public cloud is a potential godsend for small businesses, startups and individual departments in large organizations that need cheaper and more scalable services that can be set up in response to flexible business needs.”With the public cloud, environments can be easily spun up, scaled up or down or otherwise adjusted according to the company’s current needs.
• Accessibility: Public clouds are also perfect for ensuring that mobile workers or other staff members without direct access to a company’s on-premises system can still connect with the resources they need.
  “Workers only need an Internet connection and they can quickly find the files they need so they can work more efficiently and meet customer requests in real time,” Zimmerman noted.

VMware’s vCloud Air public cloud platform is among the top five solutions currently used by enterprises.

Key industry leader: VMware

While there are a number of public cloud options available, VMware has been consistently recognized as an industry leader.

In fact, according to statistics compiled by Forbes, VMware’s vCloud Air is one of the top public cloud platforms utilized in the enterprise sector. RightScale’s 2015 State of the Cloud Report shows that 5 percent of all businesses are currently running apps using the vCloud Air public platform, another 10 percent are currently experimenting with the technology and 8 percent plan to use it in the future.

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