PALO ALTO, CA, Oct. 31 – VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced new research findings that demonstrate public cloud adoption has moved beyond test and development in many companies. The study, commissioned by VMware and conducted by analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), found 67 percent of the mid-market and enterprise companies surveyed are running what they view as mission-critical workloads on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

"The study demonstrates that IaaS from cloud service providers is seeing broad adoption by mainstream business for business-critical applications and data, moving beyond test and development," said Mathew Lodge, vice president, cloud services, VMware. "As IaaS adoption grows, so does the importance of strong customer service and support as well as the quality of the underlying technology. Compatibility with existing virtualized datacenters and private clouds was also key."

Other Key Findings

• IaaS is in production -- More than 80 percent of IaaS customers surveyed are currently running production workloads on IaaS.
• Storage, on-demand compute and disaster recovery services top the list -- Seventy percent of current IaaS customers use cloud storage services, followed by 58 percent using cloud servers, and 53 percent leveraging disaster recovery services.
• Customers want support and TCO -- Service and support topped a list of criteria for selecting cloud service providers with 80 percent of respondents citing it as important. A quarter of the respondents indicated total cost of ownership (TCO) was the single most important criteria for service provider selection. 
• Importance of compatibility -- Seventy-eight percent of respondents reported that it was also important that their cloud service providers' infrastructure technologies were compatible with their internal private cloud / virtualized datacenter.
• Underlying technology matters -- Eighty-three percent of respondents indicated the underlying technology used to deliver IaaS was of some level of importance to them, with nearly half citing it as a very important or critical factor when considering IaaS. 

VMware Service Provider Program and vCloud Services

The VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP) is for service providers offering cloud computing and hosted IT services built on VMware software. There are over 9,400 service providers in more than 60 countries in the VSPP today.

VMware vCloud Services offer a broad array of VMware-compatible infrastructure clouds built on a secure platform and delivered by vCloud service providers, enabling customers to easily extend, manage and scale their datacenter workloads to a public cloud. With more than 180 certified VMware vCloud Services in 29 countries, VMware and VSPP partners together form the number two public cloud ecosystem in the world.

About the Research

ESG, an integrated IT research, analysis, and strategy firm that is world-renowned for providing actionable insight and intelligence to the global IT community, conducted the study during July 23 - August 13, 2012. The research included data from 243 IT and business professionals whose organizations are currently using public cloud services, specifically IaaS. These respondents were from midmarket (100 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000+ employees) companies in North America (US and Canada) and Western Europe (France, UK, Germany and Netherlands).

About VMware

VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 400,000 customers and 55,000 partners.

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Source: VMware