Strategy errors mean cloud migrations are failing
More than a third of US businesses say they've failed to realize notable benefits from cloud computing, largely because they haven't integrated their adoption plan as a core part of a broader business transformation strategy.
This is according to a new Cloud Success Barometer study by Unisys Corporation which looked at the impact and importance of cloud by surveying 1,000 senior IT and business leaders in 13 countries.
Other key findings include that 77 percent of US businesses for which cloud was a core part of their strategy have seen great or moderate improvements from their cloud migration. However, less than one in four (23 percent) for whom cloud was a minor part of the business transformation strategy saw significant improvements from cloud adoption. Across all respondents, 34 percent of business leaders report being extremely or very concerned about being left behind relative to competitors.
"These results illustrate that cloud transformation is not just an IT issue, it's a business issue," said Raj Raman, CTO of cloud at Unisys. "The question is how to go about adoption. As this research shows, you need to integrate cloud into your overall business strategy, which includes assessing how it can help boost revenue, gain competitive advantage, improve productivity and manage costs. Yet many businesses do not realize that reaping the benefits of cloud requires more than just a 'lift and shift and you're done' approach. You need the right framework in place at the outset, and a continual cadence of innovation and updates over time."
Despite nearly all respondents (92 percent) saying they have migrated to the cloud to some degree, multi-cloud solution adoption is still in its early stages, with only 26 percent of respondents saying their organization has leveraged a multi-cloud architecture. However, those who do utilize multi-cloud say they view the cloud as essential to staying competitive.
Nearly three in four (68 percent) say that if they didn't move to the cloud, they would be somewhat to extremely concerned about a competitor innovating first. 74 percent would be concerned about being outperformed by a competitor, and 44 percent would be concerned that they could even be forced to go out of business as a result of not innovating.
The full report is available to download from the Unisys site.
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