An October 21, 2011 report by the industry researcher International Data Corporation (IDC) positively confirms what IT developers and IT development followers’ previous prediction of an immense increase in the use of cloud-computing systems.

The new forecast entitled, “Worldwide Enterprise Storage for Public and Private Cloud 2011-2015–Forecast: Enabling Public Cloud Service Providers and Private Clouds” reveals that overall spending by public cloud service providers on storage hardware, software, and professional services will increase at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.6 % from 2010-2015, while enterprise spending on storage for the private cloud will experience a CAGR of 28.9 %. By 2015, combined spending for public and private cloud storage will be $22.6 billion worldwide.

According to Richard Villars, Vice President on Storage Systems and Executive strategies at IDC, both public and private cloud service providers are among the most expansive spenders on IT products and services as they continue to build out their facilities worldwide and expand service options. And as more firms realize the potential benefits that can be derived by using virtualized data storage, they will begin to invest more in the associated infrastructure to make the systems effective.

Likewise, accounting software for business, and also online invoicing software, or even online bookkeeping do utilizes a cloud computing system.

The following are some of the most important realities in IT industries as pointed out by Richard Villars:

  • The most significant driver of storage consumption over the past 3 years has been the emergence of public cloud-based applications and infrastructure providers.
  • Many of these cloud-based service providers, such as, iTunes, Netflix, YouTube and Facebook, act as contents depots, which are primarily in the business of gathering, organizing, and providing access to large content of digital content.
  • Other cloud-based service providers have emerged with a focus on delivering IT infrastructure and applications in an “as a service” model, such as salesforce.com, WebEx Connect, Amazon Web Services, among others).
  • Over the past several years, these companies have undertaken massive storage build outs as they have expanded their service offerings, entered new markets, and extended their geographic reach.
  • Many organizations have started to deploy their own private clouds for application, compute and content (archival) storage.

IDC also pointed out 5 Information Requirements that drive current storage demands. These are the following:

  1. Enabling more efficient delivery of information/applications to Internet-based customers.
  2.  Reducing upfront infrastructure investment levels, such as cutting cost and time associated with deploying new IT and compute infrastructure.
  3. Lowering and/or distributing the on-going costs associated with long-term archiving of information.
  4. Enabling near-continuous, real-time analysis of large volumes and wide varieties of costumer-, partner-, and machine-generated data (Big Data).

All these require that data management processes at many firms will need to have been completely re-thought. Villars also adds that the challenge facing storage industry will be to balance public clouds service providers’ demand for low-cost hardware while boosting demand for “advanced software solutions in areas such as object-based storage, automated data tiering, Big Data processing, and advanced archiving services.


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