Interesting survey results just released that indicate cost isn’t the highest factor in cloud adoption (yay – at last people are talking more about non-cost impacts of cloud) – Respondents believe compliance requirements, value and competitive advantage are the key drivers for cloud adoption. The survey was conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by Host Analytics and polled 330 global CIOs and business execs in order to understand their motivators for moving to the cloud.

Some key findings:

Cloud adoption is driven by multiple factors.

  • 80% of business executives cite better value as the a key driver for choosing cloud applications
  • CIOs report a wide range of reasons for adopting cloud applications, including compliance requirements (58%), better value (53%), and competitive advantage (51%)

Employees like using cloud applications.

  • 79% of those surveyed say that experience with cloud applications is beneficial
  • 95% of CIOs say that IT employees want to gain expertise with cloud applications
  • 83% of CIOs say they have no problem finding technical help for cloud applications

Outdated on-premise software is common.

  • 61% of survey respondents say that critical applications have not been updated recently
  • 14% say that they have business-critical software that has not been updated in over four years
  • 28% of CIOs who have requirements for that business-critical software say they lack confidence in being compliant

MyPOV

Fodder for the punditry – but results inline with expectations. Businesses are starting to see that cloud is about more than cost savings but drives real value on a number of fronts. I’d be interested to dig in to the “value” responses here and see how many were a factor of the agility that cloud brings an organization. One assumes that the competitive advantage responses had much to do with being able to move more quickly with cloud and with traditional IT approaches.

No surprises that employees like cloud apps – while it’s not as simple as saying cloud is user-friendly while on-premise is not, the fact is that cloud application are, generally more recently created than on-premise ones and hence borrow many of the design and usability cues developed on more consumer focused applications – the net result of this is an experience which is easier to use, more intuitive and provides a better overall experience than more legacy apps.

Also no surprise about the outdated on-premise software – as I’ve mentioned many times before, IT budgets don’t have the scope to invest in moving legacy workloads, and updating applications is fraught with difficulty – the best outcome for these sorts of workloads is enabling mobile access to them through some kind of API strategy – it’s generally not about the application itself, it’s about the data and there is little need to move or update the entire application, rather a “bolt on an API” methodology delivers what the organization actually needs.

Some interesting results that seem to indicate an increasing maturity from cloud users.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

4 Comments
  • Ben:

    What was the geographic spread of your respondents? Curious if there is a geographic difference. Thanks for letting me know.

  • Nice post Ben! Did you conduct the survey yourself? Definitely some interesting results and would love to read more.
    Hope you don’t mind but I pretty much shared this on every medium that I can possibly share it on 🙂

  • As a CEO who has moved most of our apps to the cloud, the key benefits to me are

    1. Cost elasticity – I can scale costs up and down as I need them

    2. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity – its there, on tap and we can exercise it regularly

    3. I can direct my precious people onto higher value work.

    Miki

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