For individuals, deciding to use a cloud computing service often requires nothing more than signing up with an email address. For enterprises, however, cloud adoption can be a much more complicated process.
In any organization, a number of key groups will be involved in the cloud adoption process: business managers, the CIO and other executives, IT program managers, solutions architects, application developers, IT security staff, IT operations personnel and many others. Those people all have different perspectives, and getting them all to agree can be challenging, to say the least. For help deciding on cloud types and cloud providers that are right for your business’ needs, see our comprehensive guide to cloud computing.
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Before they fully embrace cloud computing, those key stakeholders need to have a thorough understanding of the potential business benefits and risks. They should examine how other organizations in their industry are leveraging the cloud, and they need to conduct a thorough business analysis to make sure that it makes sense for them from a financial perspective. They need to learn about the technologies involved and make vendor, product and service choices that make sense for them. They need to consider their current IT landscape and decide which parts to change and which parts to leave as they are. And they need to make sure they are following best practices to maximize their chances of success. To put all the technical aspects of what the vendor provides in writing, every cloud customer needs a Service Level Agreement.
It’s a complicated process with a lot of moving parts, but organizations need to move very quickly if they want to keep up with their competitors.
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By most estimates, cloud adoption is skyrocketing. According to IDC, spending on public cloud computing alone will likely increase 24.4 percent in 2017 to reach $122.5 billion. And the same firm forecasts that spending on private cloud infrastructure will grow 16.6 percent this year.
Many, many different vendors have published studies showing that somewhere between 90 and 100 percent of enterprises now use at least one cloud service. And most of those organizations are increasing their use of the cloud over time. The Skyhigh Cloud Adoption and Risk Report for the fourth quarter of 2016 found that the average organization now uses 1, 427 different cloud services, a 23.7 percent year-over year increase. It said, “The average employee actively uses 36 cloud services at work, including nine collaboration services, six file sharing services, and five content sharing services (e.g. YouTube, Flickr, etc.).”
Source: Skyhigh Cloud Adoption and Risk Report Q4 2016
The report also found that cloud adoption is more mature in some industries than in others. Not surprisingly, technology companies use the most cloud services — 2.033 on average. Manufacturing (1,837 services), business services (1,771 services) and energy companies (1,587 services) also use many different cloud services, while the typical government agency accesses just 944.
Source: Skyhigh Cloud Adoption and Risk Report Q4 2016
And some types of applications are better candidates for cloud migration than others. For 2017, the reports suggests that analytics, data storage and data management are some of organization’s highest cloud adoption priorities.
Overall, the clear trend is toward more cloud usage, and enterprises that delay cloud adoption or move too slowly run the risk of missing out on the benefits enjoyed by their competitors.
From a business perspective, organizations that adopt cloud computing experience a number of benefits that could help them outperform the competition:
Although most organization determine that the potential benefits of cloud computing make it worthwhile, cloud adoption does carry some risks:
Once you have made the decision to move ahead with cloud adoption, experts recommend a number of best practices that offer the best chances for success:
Many different vendors offer cloud adoption, management and migration services. Some of the better-known enterprise vendors include the following:
To learn more about cloud adoption, check out the following resources:
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