Infrastructure-as-a-service platform provider Cloud.com and technology partners Zenoss and BitNami have released the results of a cloud computing-focused survey of 500 IT providers. Some of the results are exactly what you’d expect – most organizations are, in fact, ramping up for a cloud move, if they haven’t done so already. But what I found most interesting were the statistics around open source software usage in cloud computing.
Here are the open source statistics, as per Cloud.com’s release:
- Open source usage is pervasive among cloud computing users with 69 percent using open source software whenever possible while only 3 percent claim not to use open source software at all. All government users indicated some degree of open source usage;
- The open source Linux operating system is the dominant guest operating system in the cloud with 83 percent of IT professionals planning to deploy Linux as a guest operating system, 66 percent will be deploying Windows OSes in the cloud;
- Of those users who don’t use open source software 58 percent have no cloud computing strategy.
It’s no wonder that Cloud.com, which offers an open source community edition, asked the IT community these questions. The company is even contributing code to the OpenStack project.
Frankly, I’m a little astonished at the high number of Windows OS deployments. It’s my experience that IT pros, in general, tend to favor Linux desktops – but I suppose that when app compatibility is at stake, one can’t afford to use an open source option. It’s also notable that those few that don’t use open source software at all tend not to have any kind of cloud roadmap, which is itself a liability in 2011.
Other notable statistics from the Cloud.com study:
- Of the surveyed Chief Technical Officers, scalability (71 percent) was the most popular reason for adopting cloud computing followed by elasticity or the need to adjust to fluctuations in resource demands (61 percent).
- 57 percent of participants preferred to host their infrastructure on their own hardware;
- 36 percent of respondents indicated that their preference was to run their infrastructure virtually but hosted on dedicated hardware at a managed data center.
What that suggests to me is that the recent hype around hybrid cloud computing is justified: These organizations don’t want to lose control of their data, but they do want the cost-saving benefits and resource maximization of the cloud.
Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it: Cloud.com has posted the survey, including methodologies and more findings here.
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