British Business Open to Total Cloud Adoption

Survey snapshot:

• 52% of IT decision makers would consider moving IT to the cloud completely
• Over half of businesses are already using cloud services (53%)
• Improving technology and resilience were the main reasons to move to the cloud
• Security is the most important factor when choosing a cloud service provider
• The biggest concern when choosing a cloud provider is cost

A study of 500 IT decision-makers in the UK indicates IT bosses in Britain are increasingly willing to put their trust in cloud technology.

The Data Health Check survey, run by cloud-hosting provider Databarracks, has revealed more than half (52%) of respondents said they would contemplate movingall of their IT systems completely to the cloud.

The survey also shows that the majority (53%) of businesses in the UK are already deploying cloud services.

"It hasn't taken long for British businesses to be won over by cloud computing, with a large percentage prepared to envisage putting all their systems in the cloud," says Peter Groucutt, Managing Director at Databarracks. "The majority of companies in the UK have tested the waters with some form of cloud service and evidently can now see the benefits of moving their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud."

Infrastructure-as-a-Services (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are the most likely uses of cloud computing with 19% each. Platform-as-a-Service and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service/Cloud Backup were at 8% and 7% respectively.

The main reasons given for adopting cloud technology were to improve technology (30%) and increase resilience (28%). Reducing capital expenditure was only a chief factor for 5% of businesses.

As outages by major cloud providers have hit the headlines in recent months, just over a third (36%) of respondents said cloud outages made an impact on their decision to adopt cloud services.

Security is still the biggest priority when choosing a cloud provider (20%). Functionality of service came second at 15% while the standard of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) was of main importance to only 5% of respondents.

Cloud backup and email are considered the IT services most suited to the cloud (16% and 15% respectively).

When it comes to buying cloud technology, CIOs, IT Directors and IT Managers were more likely to make the purchasing decisions than the CEO or CFO showing that cloud computing still comes under the realm of the IT department.