Organisations still don’t understand how to measure the Return on Investment of the Cloud.
Data from a recent study has indicated that many organisations are rushing to adopt Cloud solutions without a clear plan for ensuring the needs of the business are accurately met. This could not only be a major barrier to the successful adoption of the Cloud, it may also in some instances seriously jeopardise the impact it could have on businesses, claims Easynet Global Services.
The study, conducted with 800 CIOs and senior IT managers in eight countries across Europe, has unearthed a disconnect in the overall thinking when planning the transition to Cloud Computing specifically between the anticipated business benefits; the plans regarding future investments; and the criteria for measuring Return on Investment (ROI). The facts to support this are:
For just over half (51%) of respondents, reducing spend on IT was the key consideration in their decision making process as they planned to move their applications, data and services to a Cloud environment.
The majority of respondents (55%) surveyed told us that they expected cost savings to be the most significant benefit of adopting the Cloud.
In addition to this over two fifths of respondents (45%) stated they anticipated being able to access company information and data from anywhere would also be an important benefit of transferring their business applications into the Cloud. This would indicate that remote working is becoming more widely accepted.
When asked if they were planning on increasing their investment in Cloud technologies over the coming 12 months nearly half of the respondents (49%) were in agreement.
These facts show that Cloud is clearly on the agenda and has become an accepted norm in the business world. However, what is of major concern is that less than a third (31%) of respondents believed that they could accurately measure the ROI in their Cloud projects.
When you couple this with the previously published study findings from Easynet, which highlighted that businesses were in some instances overlooking the role of the corporate network within their Cloud strategy, it is clear that there is the potential for an organisation to not realise the full benefits of moving to the Cloud.
Commenting on the research, Justin Fielder, CTO, Easynet Global Services, said: “CIOs must approach the Cloud with a clear strategy in mind – yet our study shows a worrying ‘laissez-faire’ attitude to investments – organisations clearly believe that Cloud can deliver, but our research shows they haven’t understood the full implications. Planned properly, with the right success criteria determined in advance, the Cloud can be an enabler of massive business transformation and success can be guaranteed. CIOs should treat this like any other investment by asking the right questions, consulting widely across the business, planning for every contingency and having a full understanding of the impacts, and hence ROI.”