Large businesses are relying on the cloud for file storage and collaboration. A recent Egnyte survey showed that while entrepreneurs and small businesses still comprise the largest faction of cloud users, larger companies increasingly trust the cloud to meet their business infrastructure needs in today’s global, distributed business environment.
Businesses have always had the need to store, share and back up data. Traditionally, this was done with on-site physical file servers, tape backups, file transfer protocol (FTP) and virtual private network (VPN) systems. While these methods offer high speed and performance, they are expensive, and increasingly impractical and cumbersome in today’s collaborative business world. Today, companies need to manage and share their data across geographically distributed teams as well as across partner and customer ecosystems. They also need to ensure they have access to the data they need, anytime and anywhere.
Cloud computing has become a significant technology trend to this end, and many experts have said that it will reshape information technology processes and the IT marketplace in the next five years.
Market research firm IDC expects IT cloud services spending to grow from roughly $416 billion in 2008 to approximately $42 billion by 2012. IDC also predicts cloud spending will account for 25 percent of annual IT expenditure growth by 2012, and nearly one-third of growth the following year.
SMBs have been quick to embrace the cloud, paving the way in cloud adoption and enjoying the cost-benefits and efficiencies of a dynamic business infrastructure. However larger enterprises have, until recently, been more reluctant to adopt cloud services. This is partly due to their greater sums of money and resources at stake, as well as concerns over security, visibility and control, and the reliability of a relatively new technology.
Egnyte‘s survey shows that this trend is changing as increasingly large companies gain trust in the cloud and show interest and investment in, and adoption of, cloud services. For example, trials of Egnyte’s cloud storage technology by small companies tripled year-over-year from March 2010 to March 2011, but trials of larger companies were close behind, increasing 2.5 times from the previous year.
AMAG Pharmaceuticals is one such company, now tapping Egnyte’s cloud storage solution to move all of its storage to the cloud environment.
We work in a space with complex compliance and security mandates at the federal and state levels, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,” said Nate McBride, executive IT director for the 230-employee biopharmaceutical company based in Lexington, Mass. Egnyte’s cloud-based file servers have helped us drastically cut our storage and backup expenses by over 50 percent, and streamlined our collaboration and access to file data. Ultimately we are able to pay these savings forward to our customers.”
The significant increase in larger companies tapping the cloud across North America reflects a desire to maximize ROI and accommodate a distributed team, while leveraging a secure resource. One of the primary driving forces within this context is the growth of the mobile workforce. With servers accessible via the cloud, mobile workers can easily perform file operations regardless of location.
The Egnyte survey suggests that these mobile workers are wasting no time making use of the cloud. According to the survey, small businesses conducted more than 4.5 million file operations in a 24-hour period, an average of more than 3,000 file uploads, downloads and edits per minute.
Nearly 15 percent of these were conducted over a mobile device, with iPads used the most (36 percent), and iPhones and Androids tied for second (30 percent each). While, according to Egnyte’s data, small businesses of five employees are the most likely to access files in the cloud from mobile devices (39 percent), larger companies employing more than 50 people were close behind at 30 percent, and midsize organizations with 25 employees came in third at 28 percent.
By TelecomLead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
