Companies UsinG Linux-Based Cloud Servers "Wasting Billions"

Firms that use Linux-based cloud servers are overspending on their cloud capacity by more than £1 billion annually for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas).

According to cloud provider ElasticHosts, the dominant payment model for IaaS is highly inefficient, and even at its best, companies are overpaying by as much as 50 per cent.

Estimates from the Linux Foundation suggest that roughly 76 per cent of all organisations use Linux to run their cloud servers, which equates to around £2.05 billion for the global IaaS market.

This, coupled with figures from Google, McKinsey and IBM which show that servers only use between six and 40 per cent of their power, means that at least £1 billion is wasted on IaaS every year, according to claims by ElasticHosts.

CEO and co-founder of ElasticHosts, Richard Davis said, "The latest updates to the Linux kernel have made containerised IaaS possible. This has huge ramifications for the IaaS market as customers no longer need to over provision – they are only charged for what they actually use and can therefore cut costs in half.

"In the same way that virtualisation disrupted the physical server market; containerisation is set to disrupt the cloud market and has the potential to deliver £1 billion worth of savings to Linux cloud computer users every year."

Those running web applications and developing programs and disaster recovery simulations would all benefit from the Linux containerisation, as all three are underutilised in their present capacity.

"The sooner the rest of the cloud industry offers containers, the quicker we will evolve to the next generation of the cloud, and the more customers that will benefit," Richard Davis added.