Why Cloud? The Answer May Surprise You
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Why cloud computing is not all about cost savings
The overriding driver pushing companies to adopt cloud computing isn’t cost savings. It’s not even improving the speed of business.
Instead, the biggest driver for cloud computing is the need to better connect employees who use a multitude of computing devices. In a recent survey of more than 3,500 current users of cloud computing spanning eight countries around the world, 33% cited this as their top reason for moving to the cloud. Among U.S. businesses, an impressive 46% chose this as their top reason.
The survey speaks volumes about where businesses are headed — into a world where you can get to data at any time, regardless of location or device. If everything is in the cloud, your employees have a degree of freedom and mobility that is unprecedented. Clearly, businesses see the value in that scenario.
Why adopt cloud computing? Resulting success
The idea behind the survey, conducted by independent research firm TNS and commissioned by CSC, was to find out not only what is motivating organizations to adopt cloud computing, but also what they can expect from their early experiences. The results were encouraging for companies weighing a move to the cloud.
An overwhelming 93% of respondents said their cloud implementation improved their IT performance in one measure or another. “Data center efficiency and utilization” was the most commonly cited improvement, with 52% of respondents pointing to that measure. Eighty percent saw their improvements within six months of moving to the cloud.
To be fair, even though cost savings weren’t cited as the top driver, 82% of the users said they saved money by moving to the cloud. But savings were relatively small, with 35% of all organizations saving less than $20,000.
Interestingly, only 14% of organizations downsized their IT departments after moving to cloud computing — in fact, 20% of organizations actually hired more cloud experts.
Few barriers
The cloud users also reported that resistance to the new paradigm was not as great as you might think. Among small businesses, for example, 74% said that no one in their company had resisted the move to the cloud. And among U.S. government agencies, 48% had moved at least one workflow to the cloud to follow a new requirement that federal agencies adopt a “cloud-first” policy.
One concern that has been raised with cloud computing is that, with data residing outside an organization — in the “cloud” — security might be an issue. But the survey indicated that data security concerns don’t change significantly after organizations go to the cloud, with only 25% of companies expressing more concern about security.
The respondents also said that going cloud helped them go green, with 64% indicating that their cloud computing implementation helped them reduce waste and lower energy consumption.
Most cloud subscriptions are long-term, with 65% of respondents saying they had committed to one year or more.
The survey reached 3,645 cloud computing users in a range of business sizes and in eight countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Brazil, Australia, Japan and Singapore.
JEFF CARUSO is a writer for CSC’s digital marketing team.