New EMA Research Examines Cloud Optimization for Service Delivery

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), a leading IT and data management research and consulting firm, released its latest research report entitled: Optimizing Cloud for Service Delivery.

This new research reflects the more advanced position of cloud adoption patterns today. While it still addresses core drivers, objectives, and obstacles as they are evolving, Optimizing Cloud makes what may well be the industry’s most granular assessment on how management technologies and cloud accelerants (e.g., converged infrastructure) are being combined into successful clusters or footprints. Optimizing Cloud for Service Delivery begins to shade in meaningful taxonomy of technology patterns, organizational focus, and cloud success.

“Just as there are cirrus, cumulus, nimbus and stratus clouds in the sky with unique combinations – like the stormy cumulonimbus – Optimizing Cloud for Service Delivery sheds light on how internal, external, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS are combining with key management investments in distinctive clusters,” said Dennis Drogseth, VP of Research at EMA. “The research also exposes what combinations are more likely to be successful, and which are not, and why.”

Some of the highlights from the report (based on 1,000 pages of content analysis) are:

* Cloud has advanced to become significantly more critical in importance to a wider range of IT organization than ever before. The trends towards a dedicated “Virtualization or Cloud” Organization continues with a dedicated group called cloud or virtualization support, followed this year by cross-domain IT architecture or infrastructure services.

* As cloud grows in both acceptance and importance, IT organizations are beginning to expand their definitions of “cross-domain” and “virtualized infrastructure.”

Optimizing Cloud for Service Delivery clearly underscores the continued success of strategic cloud adoption in terms of pervasiveness, the criticality and the benefits of cloud-related technologies and services in mainstream IT.

However, in 2012, this research data suggests that rather than viewing cloud adoption as a monolithic phenomenon with linear characteristics, it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. This research data highlights “clusters” or “patterns” of cloud and service management technology that should become more meaningful over time as both cloud, and service management in response to cloud, mature.

Read Dennis Drogseth's Blog: Optimizing Cloud - Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus and Nimbus