Our research[1] into the aftermath of cloud adoption continues to attract press coverage as the findings strike a chord with the business community.
A well-conceived, properly executed cloud computing strategy can lead to greatly increased agility (64%), availability (67%) and a vastly improved ability to respond to customer and market demands (51%). However, all too often the outcome is unexpected costs, integration challenges and increased IT complexity – familiar headaches contributing to what we have termed a ‘cloud hangover’.
While decreasing their IT team’s day-to-day maintenance was a key driver in cloud adoption for 45% of businesses, over a third (35%) of IT decision makers said that adopting cloud services has, in fact, made their job more complex. Some 37% of IT decision makers complained that the cloud has made their job more stressful while just under a quarter (24%) added that their role is now more difficult since deploying cloud. In fact, 70% of businesses believe that cloud computing has simply added a new set of challenges and complexity to their workload. Almost two-thirds (65%) of organisations questioned said that integrating cloud with their legacy systems was one of their biggest IT challenges.
Part of the problem may result from an increase in cloud suppliers, with over half of respondents (55%) admitting to using three or more separate cloud platforms. Running so many systems is clearly taking its toll on organisations – with a quarter of respondents confessing to concerns that their organisation uses too many platforms.
No silver bullet
Despite being perceived by many commentators as an IT cure-all for complex and sprawling legacy systems, clearly many organisations have been left somewhat disappointed in their cloud deployments and are now rethinking their strategy.
Keith Tilley, EVP Global Sales & Customer Service Management, remarks, “First cost and now complexity – is it any wonder that organisations have been left somewhat disappointed in their cloud deployments and are now rethinking their strategy?
“In many cases, cloud computing was presented as a silver bullet for the CIO, a way to cut down on complexity and time-consuming administrative processes. The theory was that this would allow IT departments to invest their time and resources in innovation and demonstrating technology’s role as a business enabler. Instead we can see that IT departments have as much admin work as ever before, if not more. The cloud hasn’t eliminated this maintenance work, and in fact, could even be said to have added more pressures for staff when ensuring that the system remains available.
“Of course when deployed in the correct situations cloud computing can have a positive impact – helping over three quarters of organisations increase business agility, 67% their overall availability and 43% improve their response to customer and market demands.
“However, despite the undoubted benefits there is still some education to be done in ensuring the market takes a realistic view of cloud. For most organisations, the challenge of deploying cloud correctly – as part of a Hybrid IT strategy that encompasses the whole IT estate – means that going it alone is not an option.
“Working with managed services providers can help businesses adopt a tailored approach to their IT, working with both their legacy environments and cloud systems, to create an environment that is not too complex to manage.”
How has the cloud affected specific industries?
The study questioned senior IT decision makers across the spectrum of industry, and we found the cloud has had a huge impact on financial services organisations in particular.
The introduction of digital banking means transactions are no longer made during traditional working hours but run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This new model of working can be somewhat unpredictable. Financial services organisations need to be online at all times, and able to service customers at any time, regardless of online traffic demands.
Consequently, availability and infrastructure flexibility are crucial and the cloud has made this possible. However, difficulties over interoperability (44%), IT complexity (18%) and unforeseen operational expenditure (30%) have also caused headaches for many.
Meanwhile the research discovered that UK retailers are spending over £260m a year on maintaining cloud services and on hidden costs, with nearly half saying it had increased the complexity of their IT environment.
We have just issued the public sector headline findings and associated white paper to complement our finance and retail insights – you can see what your peers are saying and steal a march on the competition by downloading a copy of our finance or retail sector white papers.
Cloud Hangover in the News
You may well have seen Cloud Hangover featured in one of the almost 400 pieces of coverage generated in UK, Ireland and France – including in-depth articles in the Evening Standard, The Sunday Telegraph, TechWeekEurope, Le Monde and Les Echos, among others. It has also resonated with business leaders: The CBI has approached Sungard AS about working with the organisation as one of their technology partners as it lobbies the government on digital infrastructure issues as part of its Future Needs project.
You too can join the debate at #cloudhangover. And if you are not yet among the nearly 400 people who’ve taken our Cloud Hangover quiz you can find it here.
If you’d like to share your thoughts or be involved in any future research please let us know by emailing us at avail@sungardas.com
[1] 400 interviews conducted in February 2015 by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Sungard Availability Services: 150 IT decision makers from the UK, 150 from France and 50 each from Sweden and Ireland. The research involved businesses of over 500 employees across a variety of sectors including financial services, business process management and retail.