According to new research from IDC, worldwide revenue for servers deployed to public clouds will reach $3.6 billion in 2015 while private cloud server revenue will balloon to $5.8 billion.
IDC’s research found that public clouds are generally being built on simpler server hardware with a focus on energy efficiency, density, and cost control. The reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) for public clouds tends to be built into the software layer (through failover and virtualization). As a result, public cloud computing is a unit story with lower average selling values (ASVs) than an average x86-based server. IDC forecasts the number of servers shipped for deployment in public clouds will reach more than 1.2 million in 2015, representing a 2011-2015 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.1%.
In contrast, private cloud systems are being built on higher-end hardware with more memory, I/O bandwidth, and advanced CPU capabilities. Private clouds are also more reliant on the hardware for their RAS capabilities. IDC expects more than 570,000 servers will be shipped for deployment into private clouds in 2015, representing a five-year CAGR of 22.4%.
“Flying Blind in the Cloud,” an April 2010 study by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Symantec, found that a mere 20 percent of enterprises involve IT security in the cloud migration process and only 30 percent evaluate cloud services from a security perspective before deployment. In a recent SecurityWeek column, Marc Solomon of Sourcefire addresses some of the security challenges you need to take seriously before moving to the cloud, including Loss of Governance, Potential insecurity of shared infrastructure and Data Loss and Leakage.