Large companies also report being more interested in getting virtual server capacity from external providers than in building that provide pay-per-use virtual servers to their own end users. This again refutes the conventional wisdom that “enterprises will be more interested in building ‘internal clouds’ of service-based compute capacity than in buying from a service provider,” Gillett writes.

Twenty-two percent of enterprises reported deploying or planning to deploy an internal cloud, while 17% of midmarket firms and 10% of small businesses reported having such plans. In all three size categories, companies are more interested in acquiring hosted virtual servers from commercial vendors than in building private clouds.

Forrester surveyed hardware decision-makers at 962 enterprises, 741 midmarket companies, and 577 small businesses, in North America and Europe.

Most companies that are embracing either hosted virtual servers or internal clouds are not planning to use both. Out of 602 companies of all sizes with infrastructure-as-a-service plans, 41% plan to use both the hosted model and the internal model. Thirty-five-percent plan to go with a service provider only, and 24% plan to build an internal service only.