More than 70 per cent of businesses are planning to transfer their business functions to the cloud, despite rising fears over cybersecurity risks amongst IT professionals.

A study of 1,200 senior IT decision makers from across the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, commissioned by data centre provider Equinix, found that 71 per cent were gearing up to shift operations to the cloud in the coming years.

However, whilst the survey showed cloud adoption is on the up, there remain significant concerns over data security in the wake of high profile breaches, with cybersecurity considered more of a risk to UK businesses (67 per cent) than to their counterparts across the rest of the EMEA region (53 per cent).

Nearly half of those surveyed (48 per cent) said the adoption of cloud-based solutions is one of the top two factors that will impact their business in the future, second only to cybersecurity breaches, which 53 per cent said would have a deciding influence over business decisions.

Close to a third (31 per cent) think that cloud services providers are the type of business their organisation is most likely to connect with in the future, over and above network providers (9 per cent) and financial institutions (9 per cent).

The survey also revealed that despite uncertainty linked to Brexit, 64 per cent of IT leaders in the UK believe that the UK is the best place in Europe to connect with partners, customers, supply chain and cloud service providers thanks to its growing data centre industry.

When it comes to cloud adoption, the study found that 17 per cent of organisations across EMEA are currently linked up to cloud architecture, compared to 56 per cent who currently use private cloud and 42 per cent who use the public cloud.

Russell Poole, managing director UK at Equinix, said: “That 64 per cent of the UK’s IT leaders believe that the UK is still the best place in Europe to interconnect with partners and customers due to the UK’s flourishing data centre industry, despite political uncertainty, is testament to the resilience of the UK’s digital infrastructure.”

Earlier this month, Equinix announced it was pumping £90 million into an upgrade of its data centre in London to keep up with demand from the UK’s digital economy.

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