Future Cloud Adoption On The Rise

A Gartner research report, based on survey results from IT industry professionals, outlines how IT departments are adapting strategies to support their organizations’ digital transformation efforts and growth objectives

While many organizations see a move to the cloud as a key component to their digital transformation strategy, less than 20 percent of professionals surveyed said their organization is using the public cloud. Gartner predicts the worldwide public cloud services market will grow 18 percent in 2017 to $246.8B, up from $209.2B in 2016 – indicating increased public cloud use in the coming months. By examining the challenges and trends with the greatest influence on IT strategies and cloud adoption, the research uncovers adjustments that IT leaders may make to support corporate objectives.

Findings from the survey include:

Digital Transformation Trends: Insights from the study reinforce the perception that cloud adoption continues to rise, with 100 percent of organizations either in the process of or considering moving operations to the cloud – and citing reduced costs and streamlined operations as the primary drivers for doing so. Forty-one percent see data analytics or big data as a related driver, while 25 percent see the IoT as a related driver.

Harnessing the Power of the Cloud: Forty-nine percent of respondents are using private cloud, while 32 percent are using hybrid and 19 percent are using a public cloud. More than half of respondents rely on a cloud provider and 35 percent rely on a managed service provider (MSP) to ease uncertainty about the best (or most realistic) path to digital transformation.

Lingering Security Concerns: Nearly all respondents agree that security is a major concern when discussing public cloud adoption. However, security concerns were slightly lower for those respondents who rely on an MSP, shedding light on the value of managed security services that assess and monitor an organization’s applications environment as new threats develop.

Building a Digital Transformation Dream Team: IT skills and experience or team bandwidth were the second most cited barriers to cloud adoption – after security concerns – due to the varying skills required to create a deep IT bench for successful cloud deployment and management.

Budgeting for Transformation: Forty-three percent of respondents said 40 percent or more of the company’s budget is allocated to digital transformation efforts – and with these changes, companies are evaluating their IT spend often. Most respondents believe their IT budget will change in the next year, with 68 percent of those respondents indicating it will increase.