Cloud enters ‘second wave’ – IDC

Companies are looking to the cloud to be a platform for fuelling innovation, growth and disruption rather than just a way of reducing costs.

Cloud is heading for a second wave of adoption as businesses look to drive increased revenue.

A Cisco study show companies have a long road ahead for setting up good cloud strategies.

The research was carried out by analyst firm IDC on 3,400 organisations across 17 countries.

Nick Earle, senior vice president, global cloud and managed services sales at Cisco, said: “As we talk with customers interested in moving to the second wave of cloud, they are far more focused on private and hybrid cloud, primarily because they realise that private and hybrid offer the security, performance, price, control and data protection for which organisations are looking during their expanded efforts”.

The study also examined the balance between hybrid, public and private cloud services.

Moving up the to the highest level of cloud maturity, namely from ad hoc, opportunistic, repeatable, managed all the way to optimized, results in business advantages of namely 10.4 per cent in revenue growth, 77 per cent reduction in IT costs, 99 per cent reduced time needed to provision IT services, a 72 per cent boost to IT’s ability to meet SLAs, as well as a doubling of its ability to invest in new projects. It requires workload portability, security, and policy enablement.

This security concern is potentially a factor in why 49% of British organisations are using or plan to use private cloud, compared to 38% for public.

The manufacturing industry was found to have the largest cloud adoption rate, with 33 percent of companies having a developed strategy, followed by IT (30 percent), finance (29 percent), and healthcare (28 percent).

Cisco is giving its channel a free software tool that analyzes cloud usage in organizations in order to find new cloud solutions for businesses. Customers will be able to get customized data to determine their adoption maturity and business benefits. “Everybody else is still making and finding their own way forward”.

“But most organisations are not very far along the adoption journey, and need to focus on the skills, methodologies, and best practices required to get themselves to the next level”.

Partners can give customers a 10-question online survey to get a free, personalized report regarding the company’s cloud adoption and associated business benefits. “The Cisco Business Cloud Advisor Adoption Tool can help organizations to assess their maturity in building effective hybrid cloud topologies, and help them advance to higher levels of cloud adoption, improving business outcomes”.