Companies large and small are warming to the idea of moving their data centers to cloud-based environments, according to the latest market survey by IDC, a trend that could pay huge dividends for server manufacturers in the next few years.
IDC says 122,615 servers were deployed in private clouds in 2009 and that installed base will more than quintuple to 502,626 in 2014. For private clouds, 318,121 servers were deployed in 2009 and that figure will grow to 875,954 units in 2014, the IT research firm said.
As CIO Update reports, most of that growth will be derived from x86-based systems. Cloud servers running on x86 will grow from 315,000 units in 2009 to 871,000 in 2014, but RISC systems from Oracle and IBM will still see expansion, too.
IDC expects the number of RISC-based servers to grow from 2,390 units in 2009 to 4,529 in 2014.
The combination of an improving economy and aging hardware has the IT market ripe for a move to a cloud-based infrastructure, with almost half of enterprises considering it, according to market researcher IDC. But before IT decision-makers move to the Cloud, they have a few questions first.
The report is the first by IDC to examine the economics of Cloud deployment and the costs involved. The research firm found that 44 percent of the enterprise it surveyed are considering the Cloud, and that private clouds will be a much bigger market than public clouds, which should be great news for server vendors that saw sales crater last year.