Study: Cloud Deployments to Triple

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), an industry standards organization that develops best practices for cloud application development, has released a new report predicting that its members will triple cloud deployment in the next two years. The organization’s members represent more than 90 percent of the virtualization software market, more than two thirds of the server hardware market and many networking, storage and enterprise management vendors. The ODCA recently added Hewlett Packard (HP) and Computer Associates to its member ranks.

The ODCA is forecasting growth in member adoption of cloud operations is five times faster than broad market forecasts for the $90-billion cloud computing market. According to the organization, the numbers reflect growing member confidence in delivery of industry standard cloud solutions that align with customer requirements outlined by the organization earlier this year.

The member forecast was delivered as the organization’s leadership outlined its next major advancements in addressing the top obstacles to cloud adoption including publication of best practices for cloud application development and resiliency, as well as collaborations on potential standards with the leading industry organizations for cloud security and management, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). The announcements are the latest details to emerge from the organization as it moves towards its goal of accelerating over $50 billion in cloud investment over the next three years.

In an effort to address member and industry concern on cloud service availability in the face of outages, the ODCA also released its first industry best practices paper for cloud application development and resiliency, offering seven best practices for cloud development and recommended paths for ensuring application availability helping organizations protect against unexpected cloud outages.

Additional insights from the organization’s report include: