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Rackspace Research: Open Source Cloud Boosts Innovation [Professional Services Close - Up]
[December 29, 2012]

Rackspace Research: Open Source Cloud Boosts Innovation [Professional Services Close - Up]


(Professional Services Close - Up Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Open source cloud technology boosts innovation according to a new report by Rackspace, an open cloud company.

According to the research, almost three quarters (74 per cent) of those organisations using open source cloud technology stated that it makes their business more innovative.

Cost efficiency, vendor neutrality and scalability were stated as the main benefits that help to drive this innovation by 65 per cent, 52 per cent and 37 per cent respectively.

Rackspace CTO John Engates said: "Open source platforms, such as OpenStack have a long history of powering collaboration and development on technology platforms including PC's and mobile devices. Extending this open source community to the cloud is vital to driving innovation around cloud services and applications. By choosing the open cloud, businesses are not locked into a single vendor's pace of innovation. Instead they can work with a rich, vendor neutral community of nearly 7,000 developers and experts in 87 countries to create a new generation of cloud powered services that will help them grow their businesses." UK Businesses Embrace Open Cloud: The independent study conducted by Vanson Bourne, which surveyed IT managers from 250 UK enterprise and public sector organisations that currently outsource IT services also found that the benefits associated with open source technology are encouraging greater adoption.



Well over half (56 per cent) of those using open source cloud says their usage is increasing. This was particularly marked in the retail and financial services sectors (70 per cent) and (69 per cent) both noting a significant increase in open source cloud adoption.

Among the main open cloud benefits stated by all sectors was lower total cost of ownership, no vendor lock in, the ability to move applications between different clouds and being able to run internal and external clouds on the same, open standards.


Businesses need to prioritise collaboration between cloud ecosystems: The research also highlighted the fact that we are moving towards a future where organisations use multiple clouds, with over 50 per cent of respondents already admitting to working with two or more cloud providers.

However, almost a third (28 per cent) of these respondents either cannot or don't know if they can host their information and applications on multiple clouds.

Engates concludes: "As the cloud continues to grow in importance, multiple clouds will become increasingly commonplace. It is therefore vital that applications deployed in different clouds can 'talk' to each other and those of partners and customers. Open source platforms provide the easiest way of enabling this collaboration in addition to enabling businesses to avoid vendor lock. By choosing an open cloud solution, businesses avoid being locked-in to one technology and gain the freedom to move their data and applications between, public, private and hybrid cloud models as required." The research was carried out by research company Vanson Bourne, in September 2012, and surveyed 250 IT managers from 250 UK organisations which currently outsource IT services.

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