Laura Stuart

Survey: benchmarking cloud expectations

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Drivers for adoption of cloud
  3. Inhibitors to the adoption of cloud
  4. How cloud computing impacts the manageability of IT
  5. Perception of cloud computing today from a total cost of ownership perspective
  6. Cloud computing strategies and technologies
  7. About Laura Stuart

1. Summary

As we design our 2014 research agenda, including our benchmarking surveys of tech buyers, we thought it would be useful to look back at cloud computing expectations in 2013. In our survey we compared attitudes and expectations for the cloud across mainstream and leading-edge IT buyers. The results in the following sections will help you to see how your own organization compares.

Key findings in this report include:

  • The mainstream enterprise respondents called out cost savings as the main driver of cloud technology, while the more cutting-edge adopters favored scalability and agility over cost. Still, the latter group anticipated a lower total cost of ownership even while a plurality expected more complexity in managing cloud resources.
  • Mainstream adopters overwhelmingly cited security as a top inhibitor to cloud adoption, but they also worried about pricing and privacy. Leading-edge buyers also listed security as a top concern, but they were also paying attention to vendor lock-in and compliance issues.

To benefit from the experience of other cloud customers, individual organizations need to establish how important — and, more importantly, innovative — technology is to their business. That is, they should establish just how leading edge their firm is and aspires to be in transformative technologies such as the cloud. Organizations should also tease out just how relevant the experience of leading-edge enterprises is to their specific situation and how much of their wisdom can be generalized to cloud implementations overall.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Thinkstock.