The public cloud has been shaping how businesses work for some time, it has been casting aside previous business models and changing the way organisations communicate, share information and store data. A recent study looked into public cloud use by enterprises and the use of it within businesses at the start of 2020.
250 decision-makers in IT departments across the USA, APAC and Europe who were employed within businesses of over 5,000 employees provided their thoughts and current usage of the public cloud.
Spending in IT is dropping and it’s no surprise that during an uncertain economic period, this is estimated to continue to decline. However, there is one segment that continues to grow and that is the cloud. Below, we take a deeper look into the findings of the study and the key findings.
Enterprises Are Widely Using The Cloud
Of all 250 IT professionals surveyed, only 1% were still using just on-premises. 77% of enterprises are using the public cloud in one way or another. 50% are now using a hybrid cloud, 22% are utilising a single private cloud.
Multi-cloud was found to be in use by 20% or organisations, while just 7% are using a single public cloud.
It Is Rare For The Cloud To Be Used Business-Wide
Those who reported a fully-fledged public cloud programme equated to just 13%. The most popular use of the cloud was having multiple projects/apps deployed within the cloud (42%).
24% of enterprises are still working on the initial stages of concepts while 18% were still in the planning phase.
The Biggest Barriers For Adoption Of The Cloud Are Compliance & Security
37% of those surveyed stated the biggest blocker for implementing the public cloud was the requirement to remain compliant.
Even more cited that security concerns were their biggest blocker at 48%. These were not the only challenges posed when seeking the use of the cloud. Other responses included lack of skills, cost and cloud-native operating systems not being compatible with current software (29-32%).
Lack of leadership buy-in was declared at the biggest barrier by 19%, showing that a notable number of IT departments are eager to make the change to the public cloud, but they are not backed with support from those higher in the organisation.
A Major Concern Is Vendor Lock-In
When asked what level of concern vendor lock-in was, 63% of respondents said they were ‘somewhat’ or very much’ afraid of committing with the cloud.
Just 23% have no concerns with vendor lock-in and a small percentage (5%) have absolutely no concerns or fear at all.
However, with the knowledge that 77% of enterprises are using the cloud shows that any concerns relating to this seem to be deemed worth the risk of investment.
The Public Cloud Is Perceived As More Secure
Compared to on-premises, 64% of those surveyed said they find the cloud more secure and just 7% see it as less secure.
72% of respondents stated remaining compliant was easier with the use of the cloud while just 4% found it harder.
Both security and compliance were stated as the large barriers for implementing the cloud, however, those who have invested are proving that these barriers should be of no concern.
The Most Cited Benefits of The Public Cloud
99% of all users within these enterprises say they saw significant technical benefits versus on-premise. The most cited of these benefits were scalability, agility and efficiency. Just 1% reported no technical benefits at all.
The Most-Cited Business Benefit
100% of respondents said they saw varied business benefits when making the change to the cloud, the most-cited of these was aligning IT with the rest of the business.
43% said their biggest benefit was being able to focus on new revenues, another 43% cited their largest benefit was accelerated time-to-market and an increase on ROI was cited by 40%.
Innovation Is Accelerated
81% of IT professionals said using the cloud was faster and not one individual cited that the cloud slowed down innovation.
What’s more, 79% saved money with the cloud, compared to on-premise and a meagre 5% stated it was more costly.
The Majority Plan To Expand
A large percentage of enterprises are wanting and planning on growing their cloud programmes (83%). Just under half (48%) have a wish to grow but are wanting to proceed with caution and over a third (36%) wish to move as quickly as possible.
Just 4% of organisations are planning to eventually return to on-premises, however, they also stated they are in no rush to do so.
Sector Matters More Than Geography
When seeking any correlation between answers, there was no similarity when it came to the location of enterprises.
Instead, correlations were pinpointed within similar sectors and enterprises.
