With cloud computing one of the major technology trends today, a new survey by ITWeb, in collaboration with IBM, sought to uncover insights into what companies are doing with the cloud right now and where they are in their adoption journey.

Comprising results from CXOs and senior IT leaders, the survey showed that cloud investment is growing as 85% of respondents are currently using cloud for their IT operations. Twelve percent of respondents aren’t currently utilising the cloud but plan to implement the technology within the next year or two.

The most important factors that lead businesses towards adoption of cloud computing include: they are demanding more agility and/or speed from IT (59%); modernisation and replatforming (38%); and functionality or services only found in cloud offerings (31%).

However, not all businesses are interested in the same type of cloud hosting. When asked what type of cloud offering they will be focusing on over the next 12 – 18 months, 49% of respondents indicated they plan to migrate a large proportion of workloads on both public and private clouds in a hybrid environment. 

A further 17% said they plan to have most workloads on public cloud and only a few workloads on-premise and on private cloud, while 14% revealed they plan to have all infrastructure and applications on-premise and in hosted private cloud but none at all on public cloud.

Craig Holmes, Southern Africa Technology Leader at IBM, shared his perspective on the survey results, saying: “While everyone claims to be using cloud, we believe that only 20% of workloads have moved to the cloud: complex enterprise applications and workloads are yet to move.” 

This was evident in the response to the question of where these businesses stand in their overall cloud computing strategy. The results were as follows:

• Stage 1: Discovery and evaluation of cloud (18%)
• Stage 2: Running trials and pilot projects (14%)
• Stage 3: Using cloud for test and development environment (13%)
• Stage 4: Initial implementation of production applications (28%)
• Stage 5: Broad implementation of production applications (27%).

The greatest value from leveraging the cloud comes from its ability to accelerate or enable growth, and for these business leaders, the greatest impact will be in the area of distributed work (49%), new digital projects (49%), business process transformation (49%), customer experience (45%), and digital transformation (42%). “I think these are excellent responses given what cloud is there for,” noted Holmes.

• RELATED POST: Digital skills development is the new normal

The survey has shown that the transformation to a digital business by deploying cloud services and platforms is no longer a question of if, but what and when. Many businesses have realised and experienced its vast benefits, and with access to improved business internet solutions, adoption can happen at a more rapid pace and with greater success.