100 percent cloud is closer than you think

Cloud management specialist BetterCloud has released the results of its latest survey into the pace of cloud adoption in businesses.

The survey of 1,500 IT professionals from 53 countries also looks at the differences in cloud office systems and their customers, the current and expected usage rates for cloud applications, and the effects of cloud office systems on productivity, collaboration, cost savings and more.

The key finding is that by 2020, 62 percent of all organizations surveyed expect to be running 100 percent of their IT in the cloud. Currently, 12 percent of organizations surveyed run all of their IT in the cloud. By 2017, more than a quarter expect to be doing so. However, 27 percent of respondents believe that their organizations will never go 100 percent cloud.

As businesses look to replace legacy applications they increasingly turn to the cloud. In 2015, enterprise organizations are running an average of 18 cloud applications, by 2017, that number is expected to nearly triple to 52.

Google shops are going all-in on the cloud at a much faster pace than Microsoft-based companies. 66 percent of Google Apps customers who took the survey expect to run all their IT in the cloud by 2020, against only 49 percent of Office 365 customers.

One of the strongest indicators of cloud adoption is the age of the organization itself. The majority (66 percent) of organizations five years old or younger expect to run 100 percent of IT operations through the cloud by 2017. Only nine percent of organizations 21 years or older expect to be running fully in the cloud by then. It's clear that the cloud offers an advantage to businesses that aren't tied to legacy systems. The age of the workforce is an important factor too. Younger workforces tend to consist entirely of digital natives who have grown up working in the cloud.

"We are at the beginning of the biggest shift in IT in more than 20 years. The growing use of cloud office systems and the increasing reliance on cloud applications is driving us to a tipping point -- an entirely new way of working," says BetterCloud CEO David Politis. "Cloud office systems are the foundation of the transition to the cloud, serving as the gateway to overall cloud adoption. Running 100 percent of IT in the cloud was unthinkable only a few years ago, but as our data shows, in less than 10 years it will be the norm".

You can find out more about the results on the BetterCloud blog.

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