Cloud-based services – Research was carried out in the early part of this year involving 250 senior IT and business decision-makers from small, medium and large enterprise private businesses as well as the public sector regarding the business adoption of cloud computing.
The research revealed that whilst cloud based services are soaring among business users in the UK, “the final decision making falls to the head of IT/CIO in almost three fifths of (59%) companies. The risk here is that many businesses are failing to see the very real potential of integrated cloud solutions and instead may just see cloud computing as a new delivery mechanism for software.”
The Director of Business Transformation at Cobweb one of the largest independent cloud hosting providers in Europe, has discussed how, “Using a cloud computing solution can fundamentally enhance the way an organisation does business, from the back-office business software to how sales teams and customer service personnel do their jobs in the field or on their premises.”
He went on to say how “Most excitingly, it offers the liberating ability to build entirely new services that customers and partners can easily access and make part of their daily lives. Making best use of this liberating technology is a question not solely for the IT team, but for the whole board of directors who can use the cloud to shape a new and more effective way of doing business.”
The research found that:
- UK cloud penetration has reached a high of 84 per cent as more businesses turn to cloud-based services for all their business needs
- 8 per cent of businesses are using more than one cloud-based service and half of all respondents expect to move their entire IT estate to cloud at some point
- 70 per cent of those who already use the cloud expect their adoption to increase over the next 12 months, and 12 per cent of those who do not use the cloud expect to do so within the next year
- Cloud service adoption by UK businesses expected to increase by 12% by 2016
Factors inhibiting those slower to move to the cloud include:
- 70 per cent cited concerns about data security and 61 per cent about data privacy when moving to the cloud, and security concerns are preventing certain applications from being migrated – However the vast majority (99%) of all respondents have never experienced a breach of security when using a cloud service
- Some organisations are required to store certain applications in specific locations, including accounting and finance (49%), data backup/disaster recovery (43%) and data storage (43%)
- Of those who are required to store data in specific locations, just under half (47%) state that they are required to store it in the UK
The applications most likely to be cloud-based today are webhosting, collaboration services, ecommerce platforms, advertising and online marketing services, and email. The least likely were active directory/credentials, and file and print management. The areas set to show the largest increases in adoption are CRM, data backup/disaster recovery services, and data storage – areas which stand to benefit significantly from being based in the cloud.
For more information and free expert advice about how Cloud-based services can work for you and your business, please give us a call on 0800 505 3350. Alternatively you can download our telephone systems buyers’ guide as useful reference material or even run a Quick Quote to obtain a budget cost for a new telephone system in less than 60 seconds.
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