Cisco Predicts ‘Second Wave’ Of Cloud Adoption

A study by Cisco and analyst firm IDC claims a ‘second wave’ of cloud adoption is underway, as companies look to create a platform that allows them to grow and develop further.

And thanks to their initial embracing of cloud computing solutions, UK businesses stand to hugely benefit, recording on average over £1 million in additional revenue and reduced costs for each cloud application deployed on a public or private cloud, according to the report.

Mature

The study, which questioned executives in 3,400 organisations across 17 countries, found more than half (53 percent) expect cloud to drive increased revenue over the next two years.

However, this will be challenging for many UK organisations where only 27 percent have managed to implement a ‘mature’ cloud strategy, and 31 percent have no cloud strategy at all.

Of those that do, though, up to 70 percent expect to migrate data between public and private clouds (or among multiple cloud providers) and have high security and policy requirements.

The manufacturing industry was found to have the largest cloud adoption rate, with 33 percent of companies having a developed strategy, followed by IT (30 percent), finance (29 percent), and healthcare (28 percent).

The lowest adoption levels by industry were found to be government/education and professional services (at 22 percent each) and retail/wholesale (at 20 percent), suggesting that there is still a lot of work to be done in several areas.

“As we talk with customers interested in moving to the second wave of cloud, they are far more focused on private and hybrid cloud—Primarily because they realize that private and hybrid offer the security, performance, price, control and data protection organisations are looking for during their expanded efforts,” said Nick Earle, Cisco’s senior vice president, global cloud and managed services sales.

“This observation, which drove our strategy to build a portfolio of private and hybrid infrastructure and as-a-service solutions, is reflected in the new IDC study, which shows that 44 percent of organisations are either currently using or have plans to implement private cloud and 64 percent of cloud adopters are considering hybrid cloud.”

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