Over 50% organisations adopting the Cloud to drive digital transformation: Infosys study

Infosys Knowledge Institute (IKI), a research arm of Infosys, on Thursday unveiled a global research on cloud adoption in enterprises. The research titled, ‘Navigate Your Digital Transformation with Cloud’ reveals how enterprises are adopting cloud programs and identifying current and future cloud initiatives, both from strategic and implementation perspectives. 

For this research, Infosys surveyed 876 executives representing both technology and business functions from organizations with over USD 1 billion in revenues across US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).

Narsimha Rao Mannepalli, EVP and Head - Cloud & Infrastructure, Infosys, said, “Cloud initiatives have mushroomed across the enterprise as businesses recognize the inevitability of cloud computing in their quest for digital transformation. There are multiple challenges that will emerge, but investments in cloud transformation initiatives by enterprises have demonstrated long-term benefits as they aspire to win the digital race and achieve significant business performance improvements by building a robust Cloud ecosystem. The findings of this survey elucidate the multiple facets of Cloud implementation which will help enterprises derive their strategy and embark on a digital transformation journey with cloud at the core for optimum business benefits.”

Highlights of the survey:

• To assess the intensity of cloud adoption, Infosys discovered four distinct segments which provide clues into enterprise cloud thinking and behaviour:

1. Torchbearers (51 per cent) – Have high adoption of cloud across functions, and seek to be fully integrated and a cloud-first organization
2. Pathfinders (19 per cent) - Have moderate cloud adoption, and actively seek to derive more business value from the cloud     
3. Defenders (19 per cent) -  Understand the importance of cloud, but have a siloed approach and unsure about how to derive business value from the cloud
4. Aspirants (11 per cent) – Have low cloud adoption across functions, and mostly have a tactical approach towards the cloud

• 94 per cent of enterprises surveyed had a stated enterprise-wide cloud strategy, validating the notion that the cloud is well‑entrenched in enterprises
• 49 per cent of the respondents stated that the strategy is well-defined and followed diligently, while 45 per cent stated it exists only as a guideline and business functions or regions have flexibility to develop their own
• Cloud adoption is primarily being driven by emerging technologies (50 per cent), competitive activity (49 per cent) and reduction in overall IT costs by leveraging pay per use models (45 per cent)
• The most anticipated outcomes of cloud adoption are delivering an enhanced experience to customers and other stakeholders (52 per cent) and standardising and integrating the technology landscape across the enterprise (50 per cent)
• With legacy systems still rampant in most enterprises, it’s no surprise that aligning legacy systems (59 per cent) is stated as a top challenge
• Following areas showed over 50 per cent adoption of cloud initiatives: End User Productivity areas (61 per cent) which include email, intranet, knowledge management; Business Support (59 per cent) which include finance, HR, CRM; Core (55 per cent) which include manufacturing, logistics; Manufacturing, Financial Services and Insurance, and Consumer Goods, Retail and Logistics industries are fast adopters of the cloud and have a high percentage of respondents who are Torchbearers and Pathfinders

The survey also highlighted that business leadership (50 per cent) plays a significant role in defining key business outcomes from cloud transformation programs. IT leadership, on the other hand, is actively involved in conceiving technology design & strategy, vendor evaluation & selection, and to oversee cloud transformation programs.