Cloud benefits 'flattening out', report claims
As cloud computing matures, the factors driving people to the technology are altering, a new report has suggested.
According to the study by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, organisations are not migrating to the cloud as much for competitive advantage. Rather, the cloud is now so common that not embracing it is leaving organisations at a disadvantage, which has become a major reason for organisations adopting cloud services.
Abbie Lundberg, contributing editor at HBR, explained: "The benefits are starting to flatten out." She added that the opinion of the majority of the 452 business and IT executives around the world that HBR spoke to was that it is getting harder to gain competitive advantage when "everyone" is in the cloud, but the risk is losing ground by not using cloud computing.
The vast majority (84 per cent) of the executives said their organisation's use of cloud services had increase over the past 12 months, with 39 per cent saying it had "significantly" grown. The survey also showed a clear shift in the reasons for using cloud; whereas cost savings used to be the main driver, today it is collaboration, with 72 per cent of respondents saying this was the top benefit of the cloud.
"Cloud has become much more of an accepted part of enterprise IT operations," Lundberg said. "In the early days, cloud adoption really grew out of two things. The first was IT leaders who were really tech savvy and looking for alternative ways of doing things. The second was line of business leaders saying 'we can just go out and buy our own capabilities'. Today there's really been a coming together and what the data in this report really showed is maturing and professionalising of the use of the cloud."
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