Most Computing Now Requires Communication

Communications have been important for some enterprise data communications since the days of mainframes, but computing now fundamentally relies on communications, making the old phrases "computing and communications" or "information and communications technology" a functional reality underpinning nearly all computing instances and workloads.

In early mainframe days, only a relatively few businesses required communications support for their computing needs. But communications gradually has become a foundational requirement for computing.

Telcos in the 1950s began using their own networks for internal purposes, eventually creating the T1 standard for data communications in 1958.

Communications arguably became more important for computing with the development of ARPANET in the 1960s, with the emergence of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol in the 1970s, and in the 1980s the ability to use dial-up telephone networks to support ARPANET.

Communications became even more important in the 1990s with the invention of the World Wide Web and the emergence in the 2000s of the Internet and WWW as staples of consumer experience.

The smartphone and the web illustrate the centrality of communications for computing, as remote computing requires communications. A similar observation can be made about business and enterprise computing, which now also relies on remote server access and public and private cloud computing.

So it should come as no surprise that public cloud spend is quickly becoming a significant new line item in information technology budgets, especially among larger companies, a survey sponsored by RightScale suggests. 

Among all respondents, 23 percent spend at least $2.4 million annually ($200,000 per month) on public cloud while 33 percent are spending at least $1.2 million per year ($100,000 per month). 

Among enterprises the spend is even higher, with 38 percent exceeding $2.4 million per year and half (50 percent) above $1.2 million per year. 

Small and medium businesses generally have fewer workloads overall and, as a result, smaller cloud bills (just over half spend under $120,000 per year). However, 11 percent of SMBs still exceed $1.2 million in annual spend, RightScale says. 

source: RightScale 

Enterprise respondents run 79 percent of workloads in cloud, with 38 percent of workloads in public cloud and 41 percent in private cloud. Workloads running in private cloud may include workloads running in existing virtualized environments or bare-metal environments that have been “cloudified,” says RightScale. 

Non-cloud computing comprises about 21 percent of respondent workloads. 

Small and mid-sized businesses report running 43 percent of workloads using public cloud and also run 35 percent of workloads on private cloud. Some 22 percent of workloads remains on non-cloud platforms. 

source: RightScale