The numbers are in. According to a 2016 IDC study -spanning over 6,100 organizations and 31 countries -the 'second wave of cloud adoption' continues to advance with almost 68% of organizations using some form of cloud.

Private cloud deployments remain an essential part of the mix: 54% of organizations surveyed are in fact adopting private cloud and 52% are adopting public cloud. And private cloud adoption shows no signs of slowing down ... organizations expect to increase on-premises private cloud spending by 40% over the next two years. Not surprisingly, we live in a hybrid cloud world with 73% of cloud adopters reporting that they have some form of hybrid cloud strategy in place today, even if -as always -there are various interpretations regarding what hybrid cloud actually is.

OpenStack remains top of mind for many of the organizations that IDC surveyed -59% of cloud adopters view OpenStack as an important part of their cloud strategy (via open source and/or commercial distributions). Respondents for whom OpenStack is a more important part of their cloud strategy had higher expectations for cloud to improve strategic key performance indicators than those for whom OpenStack was less important.

Source: IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Cisco, Cloud Going Mainstream. All Are Trying, Some Are Benefiting; Few Are Maximizing Value. September 2016

This signals that there is a continued appetite for OpenStack-based private clouds as a viable alternative to other options that can be perceived as being more proprietary in nature. Nonetheless, as we recently commented in a CIOReview article, the challenge is to 'mold the collective creativity of the open source community into enterprise-class, consumable, well-supported software packages that can function flawlessly across heterogeneous IT environments.' And this is precisely why we continue to work with the community and our technology partners to provide our customers with choice.

We are well positioned to capitalize on these trends. We take a comprehensive approach, including products, services and tools to bring to our clients a rich set of solutions:

• With Cisco Metapod we provide a 'Private Cloud as a Service' offering powered by OpenStack. This is a complete solution inclusive of hardware, software and expertise delivered in a data center of your choice. This 'hybrid-ready' private cloud solution will allow you to accelerate your digital transformation strategies while reducing costs and mitigating risks associated with 'Shadow IT'.
• We have also recently introduced new cloud acceleration services that can significantly reduce the design and deployment times of both traditional private clouds and cloud-native solutions such as OpenStack and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
• We are also making available to you an online quick self-assessment tool (the Cisco BCA Adoption Report) that based on a brief survey allows you to receive a personalized review of your current cloud adoption along with benchmarking information and preliminary vendor agnostic guidance enabled by IDC. We are localizing the tool in multiple languages and making it available worldwide to our business partners as well.

These offerings will help organizations bridge the skillset gaps that they may be facing as they accelerate their digital transformation strategies while adopting DevOps methodologies and abating organizational silos to foster OpenStack-based cloud native initiatives.

If you want to learn more about any of these topics please visit:

• Cisco Metapod Website
• Cisco Business Cloud Advisor Website
• Cisco Cloud Professional Services Website