According to a Gartner survey the global buyers of cloud applications do so in the name of costs, innovation and agility, as CIOs use the cloud to create modern IT environments, while business leaders see a means for cost savings.
The survey covers 10 countries in 4 regions, including the UK, Germany, France, the US, Brazil, Mexico, China, India, S. Korea and Australia, and deals with the reasons organisations adopt and deploy cloud services of the SaaS, IaaS and PaaS variety.
"The most commonly cited reasons the survey found for deploying SaaS were for development and testing production/mission-critical workloads," the analyst says. "We've seen a real transition from use cases in previous surveys where early SaaS adoption focused on smaller pilot projects. Today, the projects are mission-critical and production grade. This is an affirmation that more businesses are comfortable with cloud deployments beyond the front office running sales force automation (SFA) and email."
Reportedly 45% of respondents across both junior (IT staff and managers) and senior (excluding CIOs) roles cite cost reductions as the main reason to invest in the cloud. Meanwhile CIOs and IT directors name "cloud is a modern approach," "innovation," and "operational agility" as top drivers, with senior IT leaders rating "business advantage" higher than junior IT roles.
The conclusion? Business leaders might not have a full appreciation of the potential of the cloud, be it business benefits or strategic opportunities.
However Gartner suggests the public cloud is not always the most appropriate model for all use cases-- for instance, SaaS-based enterprise applications depend on business-criticality, as well as the geography, agility, usage scenario and architecture of the organisation in question, meaning a mixture of SaaS and on-premises deployment is best for most organisations.
Another survey finding is security, privacy and fear of government snooping remain top cloud concerns, especially outside the US, even if respondents admit they will continue investing in public cloud for SaaS deployment of software applications. How come? The "hands off" model allows the redirection of limited in-house IT staff to other responsibilities, not to mention the bonuses of rapid deployment, faster access to innovation and lower upfront costs.
"Although fewer respondents indicated investment in public cloud for PaaS, business process as a service (BPaaS) and IaaS, the results are still significant in response to these emerging technologies. Cloud-hosted applications continue to grow as alternatives to internally managed systems; they will generate increasing demand for SaaS extension and integration — both functions of PaaS offerings," Gartner concludes. "Although SaaS and IaaS are fairly consolidated, PaaS is still open for expansion, with both SaaS and IaaS providers looking at PaaS as a natural extension for growth. Of all the cloud technological aspects for which respondents indicated investments, BPaaS, IaaS and SaaS are the most mature and established from a cloud landscape perspective, while PaaS is the least evolved."
Go Gartner Survey Analysis: Buyers Reveal Cloud Application Adoption Plans
