Service provider interest in hybrid cloud continues to mount. According to a new Infonetics Research report, 82 percent of service providers surveyed said they plan on offering a hybrid cloud as a service (CaaS) by next year.
"Cloud service providers are catching the hybrid cloud CaaS wave, an emerging market where we can expect lots of innovation as the introduction of new IaaS and SaaS off-premises cloud services begin to wane," said Cliff Grossner, directing analyst for data center, cloud and software-defined networking (SDN) at Infonetics Research.
Despite its potential, service providers indicated that security remains a key concern for business customers purchasing cloud services. The research firm found that there's a disconnect on public cloud services with cloud service providers investing in public cloud CaaS, while CaaS-based enterprises are signaling a shift from public cloud to private.
Grossner said that the biggest challenge cloud providers face is not necessarily technical, but instead addressing "customer concerns about loss of control over private data, and helping customers overcome resistance to procedural change or understand how to take advantage of off-premises cloud services."
Service providers are marketing their cloud services by touting their ability to offer a wide range of services and bundling off-premises cloud services with network connectivity.
A growing number of service providers and traditional data center providers are ramping up their hybrid cloud capabilities through acquisitions and internal product development.
Equinix purchased Nimbo in January, which gave it a new set of professional services capabilities to help enterprise customers develop and implement hybrid cloud architecture, while CenturyLink introduced its Private Cloud offering.
Vendors are also taking an active role. Cisco reached an agreement with long-standing partner Dimension Data to use its Managed Cloud Platform and SaaS solutions to deliver a suite of mid-market centric cloud services to its customers and resellers.
For more:
- see the release
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