Report: Cloud-adoption success depends on IT’s relationship with business

Presidio’s 2022 Cloud Transformation Benchmark Report uncovers the biggest opportunities and challenges IT leaders face on their digital journey.

“There’s often a significant disconnect between how easy it is to ‘go to the cloud’ and achieving the desired results,” the report’s executive summary says.

The study showed that IT’s relationship with their business plays major role in advancing a company’s cloud journey. As part of the study’s methodology, it asked respondents to rank themselves as one of six relationship personas, ranking from “IT firefighters,” where the business considers IT a “reactive cost center” (23% chose this ranking) to “business equals,” where IT and the business are considered equal partners (12% chose this).

Of those who ranked themselves as equal partners to the business, a majority (68%) said they experienced the most increased speed-to-market from cloud adoption. On the other side of the spectrum, IT firefighters were most likely to cite budgets and funding (41%) and executive buy-in (31%) as challenges in their cloud adoption journey.

Moving business applications, IT infrastructure and platforms to the cloud is a vital part of digital transformation. With inflation and the possibility of a recession, cloud offers a competitive edge and driver of operational efficiency for organizations. The survey showed cloud adoption enables organizations to innovate, compete and grow during labor shortages and changing global economy by providing greater efficiency (69%) and increased speed to market (68%).

You’re in the cloud — now what?

When asked how they are using the cloud in their organization, the majority (81%) said they are using it for software-as-a-service (SaaS). More than two-thirds of respondents (all of whom were allowed to select multiple answers) also chose infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), with 63% saying they are using the cloud in their organization for platform-as-a-service (PaaS).

As organizations focus on standing out from their competitors and improving the customer experience, their ability to aggregate, analyze and extract meaningful insights from their information has become mission critical. But there’s often a significant disconnect between how easy it is to “go to the cloud” and achieving the desired results. Security concerns, skills gap and finding the right partner with the right experience are the biggest roadblocks to cloud adoption.

The research was commissioned by Presidio and conducted in April and May of 2022 by Censuswide, a research firm that abides by and employs members of the Market Research Society and incorporates ESOMAR principles to ensure accurate and reliable research. The survey was conducted with a sample of 1,007 U.S.-based respondents in various IT decision making roles.

Read the full report from Presidio.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz