Private Cloud Makes Way for Hybrid Cloud: CIO Research

The popularity of hybrid cloud among Indian CIOs is gradually gaining ground. This popularity however, comes at the cost of private cloud losing some of its worth.

According to the CIO Mid-year Review 2014, 47.7 percent of Indian CIOs are using or at least planning to use hybrid cloud, as compared to 35 percent in 2013. This jump is almost directly proportional to the decrease in the percentage of CIOs who were planning to use and were using private cloud.

In 2013, 51.4 percent of the Indian CIOs were using and planning to use private cloud, whereas this year, the number fell down to 36.6 percent. These numbers reflect why the hybrid cloud numbers sprang up.

The shift to hybrid cloud however, is not that surprising given its advantages. Hybrid cloud can give customers the freedom of choice when it comes to deploying workloads. It also ensures proper security and scalability. 

In addition, the survey also revealed that more than 33 percent of Indian CIOs feel public cloud service providers are less risky than traditional outsources and third-party suppliers.

Apart from that the four main reasons for CIOs to adopt hybrid cloud are better performance, more control, higher reliability, and reduced cost. 48.1 percent of Indian CIOs say they are deriving or hoping to derive better performance from hybrid cloud, while 41.5 percent of CIOs are getting more control or hoping to get more control by using hybrid cloud. The CIO survey also revealed that 40.6 percent of Indian CIOs are adopting hybrid cloud because of higher reliability and reduced cost.

Security still takes the center stage in the discussions surrounding the cloud. The CIO Mid-year Review 2014 showed that 31.1 percent of Indian CIOs are hoping to get better security from hybrid cloud and 40 percent of the CIOs pin their hopes on hybrid to derive lesser downtime.

Another reason why CIOs are looking to adopt or have adopted hybrid cloud may be the difficulty associated with shifting to private cloud from public.

According to the survey, 37.6 percent of Indian CIOs say the biggest hurdle while shifting to private cloud was ‘integrating existing IT products’. Whereas, 32.5 percent of the CIOs say ‘updating our current infrastructure’ was the major challenge. More than 25 percent of Indian CIOs are of the opinion that, acquiring employee skill set is a hurdle in the shift to private cloud and 25.5 percent of CIOs feel that making the business case for private cloud was a challenge.

In contrast to the challenges associated with private cloud, public cloud has its own benefits to offer. The increase in use of public cloud can be attributed as another reason as to why the numbers for hybrid cloud went up.

More than 60 percent of the Indian CIOs feel that moving to public cloud increases agility and 59.2 percent of the CIOs feel that cost of ownership is reduced by moving to public cloud. The 2014 CIO Mid-Year Review revealed that 56.7 percent of Indian CIOs say infrastructure costs are reduced to a great extent when using public cloud and 41.4 percent feel that on shifting to public cloud, they can derive advantages of latest technology.

Deployment of workload to public cloud can be sighted as another reason as to why there is an upsurge in use of hybrid cloud.

As much as 40 percent of Indian CIOs have deployed or planning to deploy ‘collaboration’ on public cloud, 49 percent of CIOs have shifted or planning to shift ‘mail and messaging’ to public cloud and 37 percent have deployed or planning to deploy ‘externally-facing web apps’ to public cloud.

With all the benefits associated with the public cloud and CIOs voting for it, whether private cloud would gain traction in the coming days is yet to be seen. But for now hybrid cloud seems the way to go ahead and keep up with the trend.