Although 2012 was marked by high-profile cloud downtimes and other missteps, the market appears to have entered into the new year with some positivity. In analyzing a survey conducted by research firm Current Analysis, RCR Wireless writer Roberta Prescott noted particularly strong cloud adoption over the past several years.
The enterprise cloud storage market has come a long way in five years, Prescott reported. Amy Larsen DeCarlo, principal analyst for security and data center services at Current Analysis, attributed this to a number of factors, including a much more diverse vendor landscape. This created competition as well as an environment in which companies could choose the services that best fit their unique needs. The next step may be increased interest in forming partnerships between cloud builders and other companies to create a more robust and efficient portfolio of offerings.
“Partnerships do more than fill in gaps, they can elevate the level of innovation to create a service that is significantly more compelling than what one vendor might do on their own,” DeCarlo said, according to the news source. “In the case of the IBM/AT&T relationship, the two companies have created a cloud option that is really a viable alternative to much more complex outsourcing engagements.”
The partnership between IBM and AT&T that DeCarlo referenced proved to be an innovative solution to the issue of security. The alliance combined AT&T’s virtual private network technology with IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise+ to bring a higher level of protection to applications delivered via the web. Computerworld’s John Ribeiro noted that the offering is likely attractive to organizations that must move information between data centers or that have a large number of mobile devices connecting to the corporate IT ecosystem.
