Uit wereldwijd uitgevoerd onderzoek doorTata Consultancy Services blijkt dat bedrijven cloud computing als een belangrijk technologiestrategie hebben opgepakt. Het stadium van pilots heeft men in Latijns-Amerika en Azie achter zich gelaten. Cloudapplicaties vormen al een substantieel onderdeel van grote zakelijke IT-infrastructuren meent TCS. Aan het internationale onderzoek deden ruim 600 senior managers en corporate IT-managers van grote bedrijven mee. Persbericht. Het volledige onderzoek is te downloaden.
10 Key Findings
The final stream of research was capturing the experiences of TCS cloud experts – professionals who are working with companies on a daily basis about cloud computing issues. From our analysis of the data from all three research streams, TCS uncovered 10 findings that explain how large companies around the world are using cloud applications, to what benefit, with what concerns, and with what future plans:Finding No. 1: Despite the hype, cloud applications do not rule the large corporation, although their usage is expected to increase significantly. Cloud applications are still in the minority of all applications in companies (19% of the average large U.S. company’s applications, 12% in Europe, 28% in Asia-Pacific, and 39% in Latin American companies). But they expect the ratio of cloud to on-premises applications to increase greatly by 2014. The case of Australia’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, illustrates why many companies have gained a voracious appetite for cloud applications. (Read more)
Finding No. 2: The biggest driver of cloud applications is not to cut IT costs. IT cost reduction is an important factor, but not the most important. Rather, standardizing software applications and business processes across a company (in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific) and ramping systems up or down faster (in Europe and Latin America) are the most highly rated drivers for shifting on-premises applications to the cloud. And the factors driving companies to launch entirely new applications in the cloud are quite different – to institute new business processes and launch new technology-dependent products and services. The case of assessment testing company CTB/McGraw-Hill shows why cloud computing will become a key tool for delivering pioneering IT-enabled offerings. (Read more)
Finding No. 3: The early returns on cloud applications are impressive. Companies using cloud applications are increasing the number of standard applications and business processes, reducing cycle times to ramp up IT resources, cutting IT costs, and launching a greater number of new products and processes. The story of a major telco shows the ambitions of the some of the most aggressive cloud adopters. (Read more)
Finding No. 4: Customer-facing business functions are garnering the largest share of the cloud application budget. Marketing, sales and service are capturing at least 40% of that budget in all four regions. The experiences of Dell’s enterprise sector online marketing function shows how one large company is trying to get closer to customers through cloud marketing applications. And a new private cloud at Web media company AOL Inc. explains how a technology-dependent company can make its technology more responsive and cost-effective. (Read more)
Finding No. 5: Many companies are reluctant to put applications with sensitive data in the cloud. In the U.S. and Europe, the applications least frequently shifted from on-premises computers to the cloud were those that compiled data on employees (e.g., payroll), legal issues (legal management systems), product (pricing and product testing), and certain customer information (e.g., customer loyalty and e-commerce transactions). Still, some companies had shifted applications with customer data to the cloud, especially in customer service, and many planned to shift a number of customer-related applications to the cloud by 2014. (Read more)
Finding No. 6: The heaviest users of cloud applications are the companies that manufacture the technology hardware that enables cloud computing (computers/electronics/telecom equipment), while healthcare services providers are the lightest users (in terms of average number cloud apps per business function). (Read more)
Finding No. 7: The most aggressive adopters of cloud applications are companies in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. They report having much higher percentages of cloud apps to total apps – and bigger results from cloud apps than their peers in the U.S. and Europe. We show how a large consumer products company uses the cloud to respond rapidly and effectively to consumer issues around the world. (Read more)
Finding No. 8: Despite a significant shift to cloud applications, most companies (especially in Europe) remain conservative about which applications they put in public clouds. Less than 20% of U.S. and European companies would consider or seriously consider putting their most critical applications in public clouds. But 66% of U.S. and 48% of European companies would consider putting core applications in private clouds. (Read more)
Finding No. 9: The keys to adopting and benefiting from cloud applications are overcoming fear of security risks and skepticism about ROI. (Read more)
Finding No. 10: Companies evaluate cloud vendors most on their security and reliability/uptime capabilities – and far less on their price. This was the case in all four regions. In fact, price typically finished at the bottom of a list of nine factors in making the cloud application purchasing decision. (Read more).
