Is Cloud falling short of its potential?

Organizations need a new approach to ICT transformation through cloud computing, given the variety of platforms available and the complexity of the applications they support. This is the key finding of a study published by NTT Communications, which also highlights a lack of clear answers over which kinds of applications are best suited to which environments.

Based on a poll of 1,600 ICT decision-makers across Europe and the USA, the report, Cloud Reality Check 2015, finds that cloud will account for over a quarter (28%) of corporate ICT budgets by 2018 and the vast majority (80%) of respondents expect the number of individual cloud platforms in use in their organizations to grow over the next three years.

In spite of the growing interest in cloud, more than one in five respondents admit to having no timelines for migrating their most important corporate data center applications to the cloud, with the compliance, security and governance of corporate data in the cloud the most important challenge cited. Further, four in ten (38%) ICT decision-makers believe the cloud as it is implemented in their organization is falling short of its potential. A similar proportion (41%) agrees they find managing cloud vendors confusing.

A lack of clear answers adds to the challenges ICT decision-makers face. Around two thirds of applications are hosted in ‘protected and closed’ environments such as the corporate data center, colocation facilities, managed hosting, or private infrastructure as a service (IaaS), while Public IaaS, software as a service (SaaS) account for a further quarter of applications. Less than 10 percent of respondents say they are using Platform as a Service (PaaS) for any kind of application.

The proliferation of ICT platforms is also undermining ICT decision-makers’ moves to embrace bi-modal IT, diverting resources towards application development and away from management tasks. While marginally more respondents agree they spend more time developing functionality for applications hosted in the cloud than they do for those in the data center, far higher numbers are spending more time on management across both environments (55% for data center applications, and 44% for those in the cloud).

Len Padilla, VP Product Strategy at NTT Com, said: “Our study shows the reality of cloud in 2015 is potentially as complex as the world it was supposed to replace. ICT decision-makers harbor significant frustrations over cloud, and there are no clear answers over which kinds of applications belong where. This is the cloud reality check in 2015 – there needs to be a far smoother migration path from the data center to the cloud. A different kind of planning approach is required for companies to achieve the large-scale digital transformations business executives are demanding.”

ICT decision-makers do recognize cloud could be good for their business. Half of respondents credit their most important cloud-based applications with the ability to scale in line with demand. Similar proportions recognize the cloud’s ability to achieve cost efficiencies, in terms of reduced capex (highlighted by 47%) and opex (highlighted by 45%).

Padilla continues: “ICT decision-makers see the cloud as a compelling enabling technology for digital transformation – there’s no better way to take a new app from the sandbox to global production quickly. However, our study suggests focusing on ambitious plans is not the best approach. Focusing on continuous improvement and incremental steps is a far more effective strategy. We hope our findings will help ICT decision-makers formulate strategies for adopting real-world cloud solutions that work for their businesses.”