The Drivers and Inhibitors of IaaS

This is the second in a series of four TechNotes reporting on some of our recent research into the use of cloud-based Infrastructure-as-a- Service (IaaS) solutions.  As part of that research, we distributed a survey to the subscribers of Webtorials, and the results are presented here. 

Factors Driving the Adoption of IaaS Solutions

The IT professionals we surveyed were given a set of 11 factors and asked to indicate the primary drivers of their organization's interest in using cloud-based IaaS solutions.
The table below shows how many respondents felt the factors listed were one of the two primary drivers of their organization's interest in using cloud-based IaaS solutions

The conventional wisdom in the IT industry is that lower cost is the primary factor driving the adoption of cloud-based IaaS solutions.  The belief is that the ability to dynamically add new capacity, while important, doesn't rank as high as cost. But the reality highlighted in the table above is that the ability to dynamically add new capacity is just as important a driver of the adoption of cloud-based IaaS solutions as the cost factor. 

Another very important driver of the adoption of cloud-based IaaS solutions is the ability to reduce the time it takes to deploy new functionality.  It's reasonable to look at the ability to dynamically add capacity and the ability to reduce the time it takes to deploy new functionality as two components of a single factor - agility.  Looked at this way it's agility by a wide margin, instead of cost savings that's the most important factor driving the adoption of Cloud-based IaaS solutions.

Inhibitors to the Adoption of IaaS Solutions

The survey respondents were also asked to indicate the two primary factors limiting their company's interest in using a Cloud-based IaaS solution.  The table below shows those factors along with the percentage of times our respondents indicated they were inhibiting their company's adoption of IaaS solutions.

These responses indicate that concerns about the security and confidentiality of data is  the number one factor inhibiting the adoption of cloud-based IaaS solutions, by a very wide margin. The lack of compelling cost savings is the second most important factor followed by a variety of other factors, many of which have roughly the same importance. 

One component of the concern that IT organizations have about the security and confidentiality of their data using an IaaS solution stems from the perception that storing data on a device typically shared with other users poses a higher security risk.

Another security and confidentiality concern stems from the overall increase in the sophistication of hackers,  For example, until relatively recently the majority of security attacks were caused by individual hackers, such as Kevin Mitnick, who used relatively unsophisticated techniques. 

However, over the last few years a new class of hacker has emerged with the ability in the current environment to rent a botnet or to develop their own R&D lab.  These more sophisticated hackers include crime families and hactivists such as Anonymous. These developments have led  some national governments to arm themselves with cyber warfare units and to achieve their political aims via virtual rather physical means. 

In our next TechNote we will continue the discussion of IaaS and focus on the importance that IT organizations place on network services when acquiring IaaS solutions.