Cloud computing sees mass adoption

Cloud computing has seen mass adoption in the last year and the vast majority of companies have now used the technology in a part of their business.

According to Accenture Australia's cloud computing lead Alison Cairns, "everyone and anyone" is now using cloud solutions.

Speaking to ZDNet, she explained there are three types of enterprise cloud solutions users: native, transformational and legacy.

Ms Cairns said: "Six to nine months ago, people were saying they wanted to get into cloud, but only in private. The public cloud has come so far so quickly that people want to put their stuff out in public, as well as private, and move their workloads around."

A hybrid cloud architecture is now becoming the norm for a lot of enterprises, which poses its own security issues. Many organisations were reticent to push through a switch to the cloud as they were afraid of data leaks, but a merging of cloud and physical storage makes it hard to maintain high levels of security.

The rising bring your own device trend is also having an impact on cloud security as members of staff increasingly demand the opportunity to use personal devices such as smartphones, laptops and tablets to do their jobs.

Ms Cairns stated that businesses have realised adopting cloud technology offers freedom to be agile and innovative, leading to a large increase in uptake in a short period of time.

She added: "It's almost the freedom to fail quietly. So you can go out and be innovative, and if it does work, you can expand madly on public and on private. It's just so much more accessible."

One fan of the hybrid cloud approach is the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and the organisation's head of technology and change delivery Rocco Labellarte told Computing.co.uk that two major cloud providers are now being used for hosting and the borough also has "a certain amount on-premises for reasons of latency and bandwidth".