CIF: Almost two thirds of SMBs want ‘complete’ move to cloud

Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of UK enterprises expect to move their entire IT estate to the cloud. This is according to the latest research from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).

The exact timescale for doing this is not clear though and over a fifth of UK organisations have still not moved at least one service into the cloud.

Through commissioned research, CIF questioned 250 senior IT and business decision-makers from both the public and private sectors. The Cloud adoption rate amongst UK-based organisations now stands at 78 percent – the same level as the previous year, but substantially higher than when the research was first conducted in 2011 when it stood at 53 percent.

Of those organisations that use cloud, three quarters (77 percent) use at least two services and one in eight (12 percent) have deployed five or more. These figures represent a healthy increase in cloud service penetration in UK businesses from the levels reported in 2014, suggesting that organisations’ engagement with cloud is deepening, said the CIF.

“This is the sixth major body of research we have conducted into the UK end user community, and while we are continuing to analyse and report on trends and adoption rates within the UK, we also wanted to explore the issue of digital transformation and how cloud computing is facilitating business change,” said Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF.

“It should come as no surprise that digital transformation is creeping up businesses’ agendas as they seek to stay ahead of the competition. Cloud is very much part of the digital transformation agenda, and it is clear from this research that those companies with plans to digitally transform, struggle to do so without the right delivery model.”

Other key findings:

Cloud adoption likely to increase to 85 percent in the next two years

Of those organisations using cloud, three quarters expect to increase their usage in 2016, and 77 percent of organisations that use cloud have deployed two or more services and they store, on average, 29 percent of their data in the cloud

Webhosting (57 percent), email (56 percent), e-commerce (53 percent) and collaboration services (52 percent) are the applications most likely to be hosted in the cloud today

The flexibility of the delivery model stands as the most common reason given by cloud users for their initial adoption (77 percent). This is followed by scalability (76 percent) and 24/7 service dependence (74 percent)

Over two in five (45 percent) say that enabling innovation is a business objective driving their continued investment in the cloud. Enhancing business continuity (37 percent) and improving customer service (31 percent) are the other objectives most likely to drive investment

@AntonySavvas