Networks Are Key to Cloud Migrations, Cisco Survey Finds

More than a third of IT professionals see having a cloud-ready network as the key infrastructure piece needed to begin migrating applications to the cloud, but almost 40 percent say they would rather have root canal or do their own taxes before dealing with the network challenges associated with private or public cloud deployments.

The numbers come from Cisco’s annual "Global Cloud Networking Survey," which the networking giant released this week at the Interop 2012 show in Las Vegas. The survey indicated that many IT decision makers understand the need for the right kind of network infrastructure for cloud computing but have little desire to wade into the complex work of creating such a network. They also see security as the greatest concern when considering cloud computing, according to the survey.

“As cloud adoption is increasing at a rapid rate, businesses need to be fully aware of the necessary steps when planning for a cloud model that is right for their organization,” Praveen Akkiraju, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco Services Routing Technology Group, said in a statement.

That rapid rate is only expected to increase, according to Cisco officials. The company forecast in its Global Cloud Index report that by 2014, more than half of computing workloads in data centers will be cloud-based. At the same time, cloud traffic worldwide will grow 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zettabytes per year.

Cisco’s "Global Cloud Networking Survey," announced May 8, includes responses from 1,300 IT decision makers in 13 countries. About 37 percent said that a cloud-ready network was more needed for further cloud deployments than a virtualized data center (28 percent) or a service-level agreement from a cloud service provider (21 percent). In addition, 39 percent said they would rather dig a ditch then have to deal with the network issues needed with a cloud deployment, the survey found.

However, 73 percent said they were confident enough with the information they had to begin private or public cloud deployments. That said, proper processes and planning are critical to migrating applications to the cloud. Without such planning, 31 percent of the respondents said it would take less time to train for a marathon than to migrate their applications.

Currently, 5 percent of IT professionals have migrated at least half their critical applications to the cloud, according to the survey. However, that number is expected to jump to 20 percent by the end of the year. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said that email and Web services were the most popular applications to move to the cloud, followed closely by storage and collaboration solutions, including Web conferencing and instant messaging.

To read the original eWeek article, click here: Cisco Survey: Networks Are Key to Cloud Migrations