Cloud Services: Enterprise Spending Is Up

The cloud, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, finally is catching up to the hype. Organizations are increasing their spending on public and private clouds, replacing traditional on-premise software deployments for key business applications and infrastructure.

After surveying more than 1,700 organizations in the United States, the UK, France, Germany, China, India and Brazil, representing more than 10 industries, the group found that:

>> Software as a Service (SaaS) has surged ahead: 64 percent of organizations surveyed report increased cloud spending this year compared to 37 percent for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and 22 percent for Platform as a Service (PaaS);
>> Scalability, visibility, and manageability are essential keys to cloud adoption, so that corporate IT departments may respond more effectively to evolving business user needs and expectations;
>> Security, reliability and availability downtime concerns still keep more apps off the cloud; and
>> Companies are both adopting cloud services and are becoming more mobile. However, neither of these trends is a top driver for the other…yet.

“Organizations have been relying on business cloud services, including email, CRM, and Web and audio conferencing for more than a decade,” says Mark Levitt, director/Enterprise Software and Communications.  “This survey shows that a majority of corporations have abandoned traditional on-premise software deployments for many types of application and infrastructure software. Public and private cloud computing is now the norm, not the exception.” 

Adds Gina Luk, senior analyst/Mobile Workforce Strategies, “Clouds help companies respond better and faster to business users who expect easier access to applications and information using PCs and mobile devices.”