CSC Smart Business UK Edition February - CSC welcomes 'Leaders' quadrant position for cloud
CSC welcomes 'Leaders' quadrant position for cloud
Leading analyst firm places CSC in its 'Leaders' quadrant for public cloud Infrastructure as a Service
CSC has been positioned in the "Leaders" quadrant in the "Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service" report, published by leading industry analyst firm, Gartner, in December.
The "Leaders" positioning has been welcomed by Siki Giunta, vice president, Cloud Computing and Software Services at CSC. She explains CSC believes that a flexible approach to cloud architecture will provide a "strong growth business".
"In this report Gartner evaluates our completeness of vision and ability to execute, which we think is unique," she explains. "CSC believes that in the near future the lines will blur between public and private cloud so we're building a public cloud that will enable the hybrid enterprise cloud now, and in future years. All of our cloud customers will benefit from CSC's consistent architecture and rate card across all cloud models. Gartner's recognition is appreciated and valued by everyone at CSC."
Early gains
The firm's research paper also laid out the motivation for organisations to put applications and services in a public cloud environment. According to Gartner, "The common use cases for public cloud compute IaaS are: development and testing environments; high-performance computing and batch processing; Internet-facing websites and Web-based applications (which may or may not have architectures specifically designed for the cloud); and non-mission-critical internal business applications."
For those companies which do commit to the cloud, the news is encouraging; anticipated cost reductions and improved business performance are being achieved in as little as six months. That is one of the key findings of the recently published CSC Cloud Usage Index. With the help of leading market research firm, TNS, more than 3,500 cloud-using businesses across Europe, the Far East, the USA and Latin America were surveyed.
Although cost is often identified as a major advantage of the cloud, it was the prime motivation for moving in to the cloud for just one in ten of the companies questioned. Instead, the picture which is clearly emerging is that one in three were primarily motivated by a need to support multiple devices used by employees in and outside the office.
Nevertheless, cost savings were enjoyed by a resounding 82% of respondents and 93% report improved data centre efficiencies. These gains are being realised within six months of implementation for more than four in five cloud adopters.
Cloud in the UK
The cloud experience in the UK is a very positive one with nearly three in four (74%) of companies revealing service providers have met their expectations.
In fact, 82% of UK companies which have used the cloud say they benefited within six months; 38% deem the improvement 'instant'. The main advantage for nearly half of those surveyed (49%) is increased data centre efficiency and utilisation.
Among small businesses in the UK, 40% have seen the advantage of using a service provider for cloud. Interestingly, as a prime reason for picking a partner, reputation (25%) is more important than cost (18%). Furthermore, the service provider relationships developed through the move in to the cloud appear to be deep rooted. Nearly nine in ten companies (88%) report having a contract which lasts more than a month and, of these, 40% are for longer than a year.
So, coinciding with being positioned as a 'leader' in Gartner's "Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service", CSC's research has shown that the experiences of businesses in the cloud are overwhelmingly positive. Even though most do not adopt the model to achieve savings, cost benefits are being achieved by the vast majority. Encouragingly, the prime motivating factor of empowering staff to work on multiple devices is being realised by nearly all users (93%), and within just six months, for four in five organisations.
The early gains would suggest that cloud adoption will play a major role in the IT function repurposing itself. Changes in an IT organisation's role, such as moving from providing hosting services to overseeing a cloud service provider, will bring with it new opportunities to add value to the overall business.
The Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service" can be viewed here
The CSC Cloud Usage Index report can be viewed here
Learn more about CSC’s work in: cloud
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