What does the cloud look like in 2011? What’s it made of?

Thanks to a survey conducted by BitNami, Cloud.com and cloud management firm Zenoss, we have a fascinating new snapshot of the cloud market. With the help of 500 IT professionals, the companies were able to get a bead on some of the factors that are driving cloud adoption, and what technologies (and vendors) that adoption favors.

For instance, here are some interesting stats that shed light into corporate priorities at the moment:

According to the survey results, the top factor influencing the use of cloud computing is scalability (61%), followed by overall cost savings (54%) and easier management (53%). However, of the Chief Technical Officers surveyed, scalability (71%) was the most popular driver of cloud adoption, followed by elasticity or the need to adjust to fluctuations in resource demands (61%).

So companies are moving to the cloud for growth, pure and simple. CTOs in particular seem to be feeling the pressure to keep pace with the explosion of data and the many ways businesses derive value from that data. It sure explains why data centers are constantly cropping up lately.

One unsurprising revelation is that VMware dominates when it comes to virtualization. One curious thing to note is that Hyper-V is running neck-and-neck with some open source hypervisors, suggesting that Microsoft’s efforts in this arena are starting to paying off. This comes even as a majority of those polled reporting that they employ open source solutions whenever possible. When it comes to virtualization, it seems, a lot of them don’t stick to this mindset.

I hope your scrollwheel is up to the task because the full infographic awaits below.

[via ReadWriteWeb]