For a variety of reasons, organizations are moving their workloads to the cloud. Our research shows that one-third of organizations have their primary data lake platforms in the cloud and most organizations (86%) expect the majority of their data to be in the cloud at some point in the future. Those organizations that already have the majority of their data in the cloud report they gained a competitive advantage, decreased time to value, and improved communication and knowledge sharing in their organizations.
Cloud-based deployments offer several benefits, some of which are amplified in big data scenarios. For example, time to value can be improved significantly since there is no need to acquire, install and configure hardware. For a large on-premises deployment involving hundreds of nodes, the initial capital outlay can be daunting for many organizations. And even if the organization were able to acquire the equipment, the ongoing maintenance and upgrades become a burden that detracts from the organization’s productivity.
