How do companies go about migrating all or part of their IT to the cloud? What do you hope for, what are you worried about? The study “Cloud Migration 2018” gives detailed answer. Read the main results in excerpts.
From migration to the cloud, CIOs, IT leaders, and other IT-related decision-makers expect first and foremost better performance from their existing IT. But they are also increasingly interested in innovations that go beyond that. This was the result of the “Cloud Migration 2018” study by IDG Research Services.
1. Good experiences.
The potential benefits of migrating to the cloud are rarely disputed. Almost all study participants are very satisfied, satisfied or fairly satisfied with the cloud migration projects their company has operated so far. 94 percent of respondents think that the projects they know bring concrete benefits to their business.
In every fourth case, this benefit occurred immediately. Participants from companies with higher IT budgets were particularly satisfied. Some may judge here about projects in which they themselves have participated. However, this factor can not have led to any significant distortion, but the overall assessment is too good. Not a single participant excludes the added value of cloud migration for the future.
From successful individual projects, the participants conclude with a clear, but not an overwhelming majority of the cloud in general. They already consider Cloud Migration (56 percent) or, in two or three years (74 percent), a topic of very high relevance – in general. For their own company they judge a little more restrained (51 or 67 percent).
2. Migration strategies.
About three out of ten respondents say their company already has a cloud migration strategy or is working “recently” on it, with another 21% starting soon or just putting the team together. The more employees the company has and the higher its IT budget, the sooner it will follow an elaborate migration strategy.
Responsibility for the cloud migration strategy is shared by 38 percent of the study participants with the IT manager, 34 percent with the CIO and 27 percent with the management (multiple answers were possible). All other results are far below. Many participants, therefore, understand the cloud strategy as part of the IT strategy or at least as closely related to it.
At the same time, it is considered a comprehensive approach that should have an impact throughout the company. The IT departments are seen with a comprehensive approach rather as a driver of cloud migration (53 percent) than the departments with their individual solutions (26 percent). “No, no business units are prioritized,” was the most common answer to the question of migration order. The strategy seems to be: if cloud, then everywhere.
3. Main Objective: To improve existing IT.
The primary goal of the cloud is to solve issues that have existed since IT started: from “less downtime” (34 percent) to more internet security (32 percent) and ease-of-use (28 percent), to “governance” Control options “(17 percent) are the approval values for the 17 selected advantages (multiple answers allowed) close to each other.
The desire to reduce costs by saving time, speeding up processes or maintenance is also primarily about improving the existing system, not about new business models or other innovations. It’s no wonder, as cloud migration is usually driven by decision-makers who are responsible for the smooth functioning of IT and often for their profitability.
Accordingly, the list reads the five most frequently mentioned challenges: data security, data protection policy, security, operational security and, in fourth place, missing employees and skills – this topic also means concern for ongoing operations. The solution seems to be on the doorstep: all CIOs and 88 percent of all participants think the cloud storage is safe if the data stays within the country.
4. Second goal: innovations.
If security and costs are right, the study participants are also interested in how they can use cloud migration to initiate far-reaching innovations and new business models. Most respondents (63 percent) prefer the privacy shielded private cloud, not only because it is the most secure cloud use, but also because it offers the best technical space for enterprise-specific innovation.
CIOs (95 percent), IT leaders (82 percent), and 73 percent of all attendees are interested in data-lake approaches because they are designed to enable more in-depth analysis than traditional data warehouses and an agile approach. That they are more demanding to use, would be accepted. Especially large companies with a high IT budget operate analytics systems and important lines of business solutions, such as sales and human resources in the cloud.
Migrate to a cloud, how? The most popular (46 percent) is lift-and-shift, ie the unchanged adoption of existing applications in the cloud. This is the fastest, safest and fastest profitable way to migrate your cloud. After all, 35 percent of the participants say that their company also uses cloud migration “to a great extent” to modernize legacy applications.
5. Communication and Change Management.
A few examples from many show that business divisions often work past each other: 55 percent of CIOs, but only 31 percent of respondents from specialist departments, believe their company has already run cloud migration projects. Ninety percent of CIOs, 81 percent of IT executives, and 51 percent of executives consider the cloud migration in the house to be strategically prepared. Seventy-two percent of CEOs see themselves as the top executives in migration strategy, with a whopping 18 percent of CIOs and eleven percent of IT executives agree. With them, self-esteem and foreign assessment also differ grotesquely.
To these usual scandals come serious conflicts of interest. Only one company in five does not want to give up its data centers. The specialists who work there will not all be able to move to the cloud with the applications they support. IT experts, including senior executives, are often under pressure from CEOs who believe that cloud can quickly make things cheaper and better. Many IT professionals depend on the careers they have built on sophisticated on-premise software. Cloud migration places great demands on change management.
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