Adoption of cloud technology is no longer debatable – the question is how fast organisations are transitioning their business applications to the cloud.
An IDC research has predicted that by 2020 cloud technologies will no longer be categorised into public or private clouds, and will become the universal standard for how infrastructure is deployed for data-demanding and transaction-intensive business applications.
Investments in cloud technology are forecast to double over the next year by 2019, with public cloud services demand expected to soar at just over 19% annually.
The transition to cloud technology is fueled by the growing needs of enterprises with regards to the following:
Business Data Management
The increasing amount of business data and the need to constantly store and manage information has become a top priority for enterprises. On-premise network solutions are becoming costly, inefficient, and difficult to manage.
In a review by Microsoft in partnership with IDG Research Services, almost 42% of surveyed organisations justified data management needs as a key priority to make the transition to the public or hybrid cloud based on their data management needs.
Collaboration and Engagement
Organisations that have already deployed business applications to the cloud increasingly rely on the infrastructure for collaboration, sharing and real-time engagement, found the Microsoft/IDG research.
Looking at the organisations that have transitioned to a cloud-based infrastructure, the focus stays on collaboration and conferencing solutions (60%), email and instant messaging (58%), followed by data management (45%).
Productivity, Scalability and Flexibility
CIOs and IT staff agree that one of the most important benefits of transitioning to the cloud is the productivity uptake and responsiveness.
Cloud technologies facilitate the deployment of business applications anywhere, anytime, across multiple devices, accelerating decision-making and customer feedback.
In the study, 82% organisations cite improved efficiency and productivity via less time spent on maintenance as critical, while 80% believe flexibility and user experience are beneficially enhanced by moving to the cloud.
Scalability and cost-effectiveness remain the cornerstones of cloud transitions for most enterprises (85%) on the ‘get more for less’ principle.
Competitive pressures in the marketplace and economic reasons continuously drive businesses to integrate existing infrastructure with cloud solutions instead or make a bold move to switch to a hybrid cloud environment.
In this way, enterprises transitioning to the cloud gain access to new cloud-born technologies and applications, which can further facilitate, down the line, the complete move from on-premise workload to the cloud.
The Microsoft/IDG research indicates a growing trend in the uptake of app deployment in the public (84%), hybrid (64%) and private (62%) cloud.
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