According to the 2019 IDC IaaSView survey, existing applications continue to lead initial adoption in cloud infrastructure for the majority of enterprises, highlighting the value of a consistent application hosting environment for businesses.
The survey samples 1500 global cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) customers worldwide. The aforementioned application hosting trend is consistent with 2018, but 2019 also sees a "marked increase" in specific areas. For instance, the number of respondents reporting the scaling of existing applications as their use of public cloud IaaS is up from 45% in 2018 to 62% in 2019. Such growth, the analyst says, reflects both the rapid expansion of public cloud IaaS usage across enterprise customers and use cases, and the importance of the transition path for existing applications and data as they move into a public cloud IaaS environment.
Over 50% of respondents report factors other than cost drive the decision to use public cloud IaaS. Such factors include access to cloud native frameworks, new technology services such as AI/ML and access to value-added services to manage resources. The workloads enterprises use public cloud infrastructure services for are roughly split between commercial off-the-shelf software and custom applications, with 58% of respondents planning to move commercial off-the-shelf software to a SaaS-based consumption model within the next 5 years.
No less than 78% of respondents report an increase in percentage of infrastructure budget allocated to public cloud IaaS, while 42% report using one primary public cloud IaaS provider along with multiple secondary public cloud IaaS providers. In addition, 19% report using multiple primary public cloud IaaS providers. Nearly half (48%) have applications in one public cloud regularly communicating with applications in a different public cloud, and 52% use hybrid cloud infrastructure for optimal placement of workloads across infrastructure options.
"Public cloud is an increasingly critical component of the IT infrastructure mix at enterprises," the analyst concludes. "IDC's recent investments in new market intelligence programs like IaaSView underscore our recognition of the growth in importance of public cloud infrastructure services for enterprises, and our continued commitment to provide timely insights into enterprise buyer sentiments around the evolving infrastructure market."