Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 27 | Page 26

TRENDING “ RAPIDLY EVOLVING BUSINESS CHALLENGES MEAN THAT DIVERSITY AND COLLABORATION ARE NECESSARY TO MOVE FORWARD. A CLOUD-LED STRATEGY MUST BE AT THE HEART OF ANY DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. any Digital Transformation,” said Alex Hilton, Chief Executive at the Cloud Industry Forum. Finding #1: Organisations are cloud keen and want to focus on outcomes The results of the survey confirm that there is almost a universal desire to shift from traditional IT environments to cloud solutions. A total of 87.2% of those surveyed 26 INTELLIGENTCIO stated that they would do this if a ‘perfect solution’ existed. These results were reflected at all levels, across business and technical respondents – and 82% of respondents agreed that the senior leadership in their organisation ‘understands and values progressive technology’. Yet, the survey also found that more than three-quarters cited ‘lack of clear policy/strategy’ as a factor impeding cloud adoption which supports the policy review that CCS and GDS have undertaken, as the survey also revealed more focus is needed on the technical and non- technical challenges of modernising existing technology, not just building new cloud- native applications. Finding #2: Significant concern about commercial risks of single provider solutions There is a lot of focus on the technical challenges of adopting cloud but one of the key revelations from the survey was the extent of concern of the commercial risks of cloud adoption. A total of 78% of respondents expressed a fear of vendor lock-in and a similar number agreed that the risk of ‘over reliance on a sole provider’ is inhibiting their cloud adoption. More than 85% agreed that they would prefer multi-cloud, presumably as a means to mitigate these commercial risks. These www.intelligentcio.com