Date: March 29, 2017
Author: 11:11 Systems
Editor’s Note: As of January 2022, iland is now 11:11 Systems, a managed infrastructure solutions provider at the forefront of cloud, connectivity, and security. As a legacy iland.com blog post, this article likely contains information that is no longer relevant. For the most up-to-date product information and resources, or if you have further questions, please refer to the 11:11 Systems Success Center or contact us directly.
We recently read with interest the results of the latest Cloud Industry Forum research survey into UK Cloud adoption and a couple of things jumped out at us, as they mirror the experience 11:11 Systems is having in the UK market:
- Overall cloud adoption rate now stands at 88% and the rate of cloud adoption has increased by 83% since 2010 . We rarely speak with a customer that isn’t using some type of cloud service and that is reflected in these results. The difference now is that, rather than taking an adhoc approach, companies of all sizes in the UK are taking a more strategic, planned approach to cloud adoption in recognition of its importance to business transformation.
- 67% of users expect to increase their adoption of cloud services over the coming year. Again, this matches our experience – particularly for companies in highly regulated sectors such as Financial Services and Bio-tech/pharma that may have been slow to the cloud adoption trend. There is now growing realization that higher levels of IT security and industry compliance can be achieved in the cloud than on-premises and new cloud use cases are emerging as a result.
- There is a more significant increase in cloud adoption amongst small and public sector organizations. Cloud security levels have come a long way and this, combined with the cost-effectiveness of cloud models, has attracted both small companies and public sector organizations to the cloud. Cloud-based disaster recovery solutions mean that even small and medium organizations can achieve a business continuity strategy previously only available to large enterprises. A great example of this is the East Thames public housing association, which has kicked off its “cloud-first” strategy with a successful DRaaS project.
- 70% of respondents are either currently seeing or anticipate seeing their organization have a competitive advantage from utilizing cloud services. We hear this again and again from our customers – the benefits of cloud adoption surpass their expectations and drive competitive advantage. Many 11:11 Systems customers have even discovered unexpected use cases from cloud services such as using DR cloud capacity for dev/test.
So, the survey results are encouraging and the only way is up for the UK cloud industry (just as long as we deal with that Brexit and GDPR issue – more on that in upcoming blogs and webinars!). However, we were surprised by one of the results that the survey uncovered about cloud migration:
“On average it took 15 months to migrate applications to the cloud, with 90% experiencing difficulties when migrating to a cloud solution…”
The reasons given for these migration difficulties included the complexity of migration (43%) and lack of internal skills/knowledge (32%). Clearly, more planning and expert assistance are needed upfront to prepare for cloud migrations. After all, there are very few companies who can make either the monetary or time investment required to develop new cloud implementation and management skills and a partnership between the customer and cloud service provider based on mutual understanding of responsibilities needs to fill that gap. Indeed, as UK cloud adoption levels continue to rise, the complexity of cloud projects will only increase and a high-touch, consultative approach from cloud providers will become more important.
