Future of Cloud Computing Survey - North Bridge Venture Partners

I am now moving to a summer schedule of three posts during the busienss week (Monday, Wednesdasy, and Friday) but will continue the two fun ones on the weekend as it is the summer. I am going to be travelling a lot but will be connencted most of the time. 

North Bridge Venture Partners has released the results of its second annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. The research was supported by 39 industry collaborators, including Scribe Software. The 2012 survey captures current industry perceptions, sentiments and emerging trends in cloud computing. A total of 785 participants, spanning industry experts, users and vendors responded to the survey. This was an increase over the 417 participants in last year’s survey. The majority of respondents were in the C suite, while line of business and IT managers were next in line with about equal rates.

The results indicated that companies are increasing their trust in cloud solutions, with 50 percent of respondents confident that cloud solutions are viable for such mission critical business applications as e-mail and CRM. The top reason for adopting the cloud was scalability, with 57 percent of companies identifying it as the most important driver for cloud adoption. Business agility was ranked second in the drivers for cloud adoption, with 54 percent of respondents focused on agility.

The primary inhibitor to adoption remains security concerns in the growing cloud marketplace with 55 percent of respondents identifying it as a concern. It was followed by regulatory compliance (38%) and vendor lock-in (32%).

The majority of respondents (53 percent) believe that cloud computing provides a lower total cost of ownership and also creates a less complex IT workflow. At the same time, over a third of respondents (38 percent) claim no impact on IT hiring as a result of cloud technologies.

This is part a growing body of research that supports the growth of the cloud. The report concluded that investment is rocking but there is still work to do. There is six times more spending on SaaS as compared to other software. 

 

Comments

[Michael Cornelia]

I have heard that one of the main reason business's are investing in cloud computing services was because of the disaster recovery side of it. Cloud computing is another way for companies to secure valuable information from thieves and disasters. I am sure IT hiring will sky rocket once companies realize how important it can be to someone's business.