世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent survey from Media Interactive (iResearch) and reported on by japan.internet.com took a look at the matter of servers, with this particular article focusing on the virtualisation aspect. I’ll apologise in advance for the technical nature of this, but it’s something I’m interested in, and it’s one aspect of Cloud Computing, another buzzword that does the rounds a lot without many people particularly knowing what it actually means.

Demographics

On the 27th of August 2010 300 members of the Media Interactive monitor group who worked in organisations and has the power of approval for server purchases completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The respondents were between 20 and 79 years old, but no further demographic information was given.

Cloud Computing is one of these terms with different meaning for different people. My definition is using resources from a pool of resources, with the usage expanding and contracting on demand, and charging being based on the usage. On which device, or how many devices, or who else is sharing the device is unimportant, just that the resources are available somewhere.

Research results

First, people were given a few phrases and asked if they thought each of the services was a Cloud Service. The most often identified as a Cloud was accessing a mail service via an intranet, with 39.7% saying so. On the other hand, only 7.0% said Twitter and other microblogging services were Cloud Services.

Q1: Do you know the term “Server Virtualisation”? (Sample size=300)

Know it well	16.3%
Know a little about it	35.3%
Just heard the term	34.7%
Don’t know anything at all	13.7%

When asked if they were using IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service, 15.3%, or 46 people, said they were. They were then asked the following, which implies that for this survey IaaS and Server Virtualisation are equivalent terms, and that server virtualisation was outsourced.

Q2: What benefits do you feel you have gained from server virtualisation? (Sample size=46, multiple answer)

Decreased infrastructure running costs	75.9%
Decreased resource running costs	65.5%
Reduced up-front costs	62.1%
Shortened server maintenance periods	48.3%
Can use the latest software and hardware	37.9%
Can quickly, flexibly add and remove resources	34.5%
Improved availability, security	34.5%
Other	0.0%
Nothing in particular	0.0%

The next question went to the other 254 people, or 84.7%, who had not introduced IaaS.

Q3: What problems do you have with your current server infrastructure? (Sample size=254, multiple answer)

Burdensome up-front costs	40.9%
Infrastructure running costs are large	28.0%
Worried about security	27.6%
Cannot reduce ongoing running costs	23.2%
Cannot add, remove resources to reflect demand	11.3%
Long server maintenance periods	9.4%
Other	1.6%
Nothing in particular	31.5%

There next followed an advertorial for NIFTY Cloud, a public cloud IaaS with zero up-front setup cost, so I thought I’d better mention it too as I’m using the rest of the article.