Cloud translates to competitive advantage for UK businesses

UK businesses are becoming more competitive as a direct result of Cloud services, according to the latest research into Cloud adoption trends in the UK by the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).

The research, which was conducted in May 2014, polling 250 senior IT and business decision-makers, found that 55 per cent of Cloud users have experienced a competitive advantage from using Cloud services and a further 23 per cent anticipate seeing one. Isolating the smallest organisations, these figures stand at 69 per cent and 19 per cent respectively.

The research also found that the migration to Cloud has resulted in objectives being achieved for many organisations; 66 per cent achieved their objective to increase speed of access to technology, 65 per cent improved uptime/reliability of IT services, and 59 per cent improved service levels of IT.

Other key findings include:
· 47 per cent of those who use Cloud, or expect to in the future, consider faster access to technology a tangible benefit, while around two fifths (41 per cent) consider flexible access to technology a tangible benefit of cloud service deployment that their organisation has achieved

· Flexibility of delivery continues to be the most commonly cited primary reason for initial Cloud adoption (17 per cent). Operational cost savings come a close second (15 per cent), up from a slight dip in 2013, when it was cited as the primary reason for adoption by 9 per cent of cloud users

· This picture remains relatively consistent across organisations of all sizes, although those organisations in the public sector show a slight preference towards cost savings, 21 per cent of which cited operational cost savings as their primary reason for Cloud adoption.

Alex Hilton, CIF’s CEO, said: “It is encouraging to see that the flexibility brought by Cloud services is translating into competitive advantage for businesses – particularly for SMEs who are perhaps best-placed to benefit from more agile and flexible IT. Overall satisfaction rates for Cloud remain high, with 89 per cent reporting satisfaction with their use of Cloud services. This no doubt owes a large part to the fact that Cloud services are helping businesses meet their desired objectives and are offering users tangible benefits, bringing new flexibility to the IT estate.

“Another significant benefit has been the cost effectiveness of Cloud services compared with on-premise solutions. Organisations using Cloud report cost-savings of 9 per cent in real terms in their first year of adoption alone – and this saving is expected to double to 19 per cent within five years. This figure increases further still for organisations with fewer than 20 employees, which, on average, report initial cost-savings of 13 per cent,” Hilton continued.

“However, drilling down in to the data, it becomes clear that there is still work to be done to improve satisfaction; 87 per cent of Cloud users feel their migration could have been improved in some way, with around two fifths (38 per cent) wishing it had cost less. We also see that many organisations did experience some difficulties in their first migration to a Cloud service. For example, 31 per cent struggled with the complexity of migration, while 35 per cent would have liked better tools from their Cloud Service Provider. In a number of cases these difficulties resulted in lost productivity during implementation, delays in time to market, and to a lesser extent, some negative impact on the customer experience.

“Although these difficulties do not seem to have impacted UK businesses’ enthusiasm for Cloud in any significant way, improving the overall experience of Cloud, from service design to service migration and management, should be an ongoing focus and priority for the industry to further enhance the benefits of Cloud experienced by businesses,” he concluded.