Capgemini has announced the findings of a survey examining the global uptake of enterprise cloud and its key drivers and barriers. The report, Business Cloud: The State of Play Shifts Rapidly: Fresh Insights into Cloud Adoption Trends, reveals that while the market cannot yet be defined as fully mature, 81 per cent of organisations are using cloud technologies to some degree and are either maturing or are close to maturity in terms of their adoption. However, while a third of companies agree that the IT department is currently the main driver of adoption, responsibility for driving it is increasingly shifting away from the IT department to the business.

The survey of 460 IT leaders and senior business managers at major enterprises worldwide shows 76 per cent of companies now having a formal strategy in place for cloud. However, confusion still exists around who should be the main driver of adoption strategies within an organisation. The Board is seen as both a driver (29 per cent) and a blocker (28 per cent). “It is safe to conclude that by now the benefits of the cloud are clear and widely understood. The adoption of cloud from an enterprise perspective is however set for major change, increasingly taking a truly strategic role in the organisation - a phenomenon we call ‘Business Cloud’. The initiative for driving cloud solutions is shifting from the IT department to the business unit as companies focus more on tangible business value,” says Ron Tolido, senior vice president and chief technology officer of applications, Continental Europe, Capgemini. “The cloud has rapidly established a new benchmark in terms of how easy, quick and flexible solutions should be available to the business and it puts the alignment between business and IT in a whole new perspective.”

However, migration is being impacted by persistent concerns around cloud adoption, with over 40 per cent of respondents citing continued fears around security as an impediment to uptake and only 56 per cent saying they trust the cloud for storing data. Over a third also cited issues with data sovereignty around the physical location of data stored in the cloud as a key barrier to adoption, particularly in EMEA. As a result, the report highlights still a preference for private cloud solutions: 40 per cent of organisations cited their preference for off-premise and partner-hosted private solutions and a further 26 per cent cited a preference for on-premise private solutions.

Companies are therefore taking a step-by-step approach and migrating only specific areas or applications into the cloud as and when they need to. As they seek to work with specialist providers to support the needs of specific departments or functions, the majority of companies (72 per cent) are working, or planning to work, with more than one vendor. However, currently migration is largely focused on new applications that support ‘cutting edge’ areas of business, rather than legacy applications. With the focus on new applications for 78 per cent of organisations, cloud technology is underpinning real change within major enterprises around the world. Migrating legacy applications can be expensive and may not deliver the benefits that organisations seek, but moving new applications to the cloud will allow organisations to respond more rapidly to changing demands and competitive pressures, creating real agility and differentiation within the business.

For a full copy of the report, visit: http://www.capgemini.com/business-cloud-report

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