Many IT pros questioned in a recent survey say they will move a majority of their IT operations to the cloud within the next five years.
The most recent percentage of those making the move is 29 compared to 27 percent in 2012. Also, 59 percent are now identifying IT operations that are candidates for cloud hosting.
The IDG Enterprise survey involved 1,358 IT professionals who are technology buyers at businesses with some possible or current cloud use.
On the other hand, the percentage of who will limit cloud activity to private clouds (18 percent) or to using software-as-a-service (7 percent) is declining. Private cloud use is preferred over public clouds, the survey adds.
Businesses favor private clouds, with 69 percent of respondents saying they have data, applications or infrastructure deployed in a private cloud compared to 59 percent utilizing a public cloud. Some 28 percent use community clouds, often for education and high-tech uses.
IT and security executives favor more use of the cloud than those survey respondents in other technology positions.
Collaboration, e-mail and human resource technology are among the most popular areas for moving into the cloud.
“Moving collaboration content and e-mail into the cloud for storage not only reduces IT’s maintenance footprint inside the organization, it also frees them up to support the front-line business processes,” Digitiliti said in a statement.
The survey also showed that security of corporate information in the cloud continues to be a “top concern.”
Also, the argument that the cloud reduces IT costs — “remains difficult to demonstrate,” the survey said.
There is expected to be an increased adoption of the three types of clouds during the next 18 months. By the middle of 2014, private clouds will be 36 percent of the IT environment at businesses. Public clouds will be about 20 percent of the IT environment. On the other hand, small and mid-sized organizations will use the public cloud more than larger organizations.
When discussing applications, more than half of those surveyed favor a public or quasi-public (such as a hybrid or community) version for collaboration/conferencing, CRM (customer relationship management), e-mail and call center applications.
Businesses, on the other hand, would rather use just a private cloud for compliance, data storage/data management, and security that impact IT operations, critical business data or complex business processes, the survey said.
In addition, businesses plan to invest an average of $1.5 million in cloud-based services during the next 12 months—a 10-percent increase over 2012, the survey said. The larger companies will spend more than small and medium-sized companies: $2.8 million versus $486,000 on average, based on averages, the survey adds. Also, financial services and high-tech companies will spend the most on the cloud.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey