Virtual Machines Create a “Snowball” Effect

The Verizon 2013 State of the Enterprise Cloud Report was released on August 29, 2013. This report draws upon Verizon data between January 2012 and June 2013 and highlights enterprise cloud trends seen through this data. This blog post is the first in a four-part series to provide deeper insight into the specific data points from the report.

Virtual machines (VMs) provide enterprises the ability to create a software implementation that executes just like a physical machine. Whether it’s a full operating system or single application, enterprises can enable this tool to allow users to access information remotely – creating efficiencies across the board both in workforce and company expenditures.

These efficiencies in turn drive further adoption of virtual machines – to the tune of a 35 percent increase in VM deployment over the past 18 months. What is even more telling about this growth is that once enterprises deploy one application to the cloud and they see the results, they begin migrating others. In essence, the demand for cost savings and efficiency drive the deployment of VMs and then the success of those deployments drive further deployments.

This “snowball effect” impacts all aspects of cloud services. The addition of VMs drives increased use of cloud memory and storage, 100 and 90 percent respectively over 18 months. And even though enterprises are learning to be more efficient in cloud deployments and therefore,  are able to get more production out of each VM, they continue to increase their monthly investments in cloud services (45 percent increase in the past year). We expect these stats to increase going forward as the cloud “snowball” continues to gain momentum and size.

Cloud environments are becoming table stakes for business operations. VMs are at the core of this transformation as they become more efficient while IT organizations and business lines continue to gain confidence in the benefits of cloud.  Whether it’s enabling new retail services, increasing worker productivity or leveraging big data, the cloud is showing no signs of slowing down.