Ensono flags distributed cloud as growth area

All the major analyst houses have said it and so have an increasing number of channel sources – it is clear that there has been a rush to cloud over the past year.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the adoption of hosted tools and services and IDC, Gartner and some vendors have pointed the finger at growing cloud revenues and more adoption of distributed cloud.

Gartner has forecast that by 2025 there will be the option of distributed cloud services from the majority of providers as customers look for a cost-effective single pane of control with the benefit of local data control.

Ensono has now added its own findings to the mix, with the hybrid IT player asking those responsible for technology at a number of customers on both sides of the Atlantic what they think about distributed cloud.

The headline findings are that customers liked the idea of using technology that could cut down on network issues and reduce the risks of failure. The research also found that 42% of respondents viewed the removal of latency as a major benefit of distributed cloud.

There were also some implications on the compliance front, with companies being encouraged to hold some data locally.

“Distributed cloud provides us with a window into the future of public cloud,” said Sean Roberts, general manager of public cloud at Ensono. “By unmooring public cloud services from being tied to a fixed location, enterprises have the freedom to rethink the possibilities of cloud architecture, moving public cloud workloads to wherever they are needed in a business’s infrastructure.

“This is a particularly important asset for compliance, enabling firms to keep up with shifts in regulation and easily adjust data location – backed by continuous control, monitoring and support from the public cloud provider.”

Roberts urged the rest of the channel to take notice of distributed cloud and the advances made by some of the large players, including AWS Outposts, Google Anthos and Microsoft Azure Stack.

“Over the next decade, distributed cloud will put the user at the centre of public cloud,” he said. “We are already starting to see the emergence of a low-latency, high-performance form of computing centred around cloud services processed as close to the user as possible. Out of this will flow unbridled innovation in edge computing, accelerating advancements in everything from autonomous vehicles to industrial connected devices.”

Ensono is targeting growth areas such as distributed cloud on the back of a recent bid, reported to be in the region of $1.7bn, from investment firm KKR.