According to 451 Research LLC, organisations are increasingly adopting cloud as a key tool for achieving business growth.
A study commissioned by Microsoft and carried out by Research LLC says that 52 per cent of the organisations identify cloud to be an effective solution for providing business growth or helping companies realign with new business strategy or goals. Majority of the customers are looking to grow their business with a hybrid cloud consumption model.
Marco Limena, vsice-president, hosting service providers business at Microsoft, says, “The next two years will be the era of hybrid cloud, with 68 per cent of customers planning to adopt hybrid cloud models. In addition, the survey found that as customers begin to move their IT environments into the cloud, software from trusted sources and brand name become important.”
In fact, the survey findings show that the two-thirds of software-as-a-service customers use software online which they had previously installed on-premises. This highlights a significant opportunity for hosting service provider partners to offer customers Microsoft software which the companies trust in a cloud environment.
At present, 30 million x86 servers are operating worldwide, and approximately 22 million servers are functioning on the Windows platform and Windows-based applications. In addition, Microsoft Exchange has more than 78 per cent market share of in sourced email in businesses larger than 25 seats across the US, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
