The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), an independent community of more than 20,000 international database and technology professionals representing companies, government agencies and educational institutions, has just released the findings of a new survey of IOUG members that benchmarks the rapid evolution of cloud computing among Oracle users. The survey, consisting of responses from 267 IT Technology Professionals, and Data Managers, was conducted under the IOUG’s ResearchWire program by Unisphere Research and sponsored by Oracle.

”No puff or fluff, just reality that Cloud is in use by our members and essential to companies worldwide,” said Andy Flower, President of the IOUG. “Recognizing the growing need of Virtualization and relevancy of the Cloud to our members, IOUG is offering a bootcamp at COLLABORATE11 – IOUG Forum to share real user insights and industry expert experiences about virtualization and cloud computing that managers should consider even when education budgets may be limited.”

Key highlights of the survey’s findings include the following:

• 29% of organizations reported they already have deployed an internal cloud.
• 37% indicated some piece of their organization’s workload processing or infrastructure is now available through private cloud services.
• Private cloud implementation is growing significantly over the next year.
• With private cloud implementations, respondents highlighted emphasis on “platform as a service” (database and middleware capabilities).
• Adoption of private cloud services for IT workload processing or infrastructure is outpacing the use of public platform service providers.
• Security continues to be a concern for public cloud and online application services.

Oracle technologists desiring additional resources, lessons learned, best practices and answers about virtualization and cloud computing should plan on attending the IOUG Virtualization Bootcamp at COLLABORATE11 – IOUG Forum where sessions will provide attendees with the basics and advancement of cloud computing.

According to Unisphere Research analyst and report author, Joseph McKendrick, “We expect the trend to private cloud to continue intensifying. Users who are relatively mature in their use of private cloud and who have invested more significantly are reaping cost savings by eliminating duplication, standardizing for operational efficiency and through higher asset utilization.” Mr. McKendrick will explain the survey findings in detail via a Webcast on December 2, 2010 at 12:00 noon EST. Watch the Webcast at http://www.oracle.com/goto/iougcloudsurvey

“This survey shows that cloud adoption is increasing and that more organizations are interested in private platform-as-a-service clouds,” said Rex Wang, vice president, Oracle Product Marketing. “Oracle offers comprehensive solutions for building and managing private PaaS and IaaS clouds, customer options for deploying Oracle technology in public clouds or on-premise, and enterprise applications deployed on a shared services private cloud, as well as a public cloud model via Oracle On Demand.”

The complete 33-page report is available to all IOUG members as a benefit of membership within the organization at www.ioug.org. Visit www.collaborate11.ioug.org for complete details and to register for educational sessions being offered by the IOUG throughout COLLABORATE 11 taking place April 10-14, 2011, in Orlando, Florida.