Research Indicates that Cloud Increases Short Term Costs for Long Term Gains

IDG Enterprise has released the results from the 2012 Cloud Computing survey examining cloud computing implementation, usage, investment plans and vendor requirements.

The survey, completed by more than 1,650 IT and security decision-makers from a range of industries, highlights the growth in cloud computing investments, demonstrating the value cloud computing provides to organizations. Respondents state that 34% of their current IT budget is allocated to cloud computing solutions and more than half (63%) expect to increase spending in the next 12 months. On average, organizations will increase cloud computing spending by 16%.

Key findings include:

-- Sixty-three percent of organizations plan to increase their IT budget allocation for cloud computing initiatives over the next 12 months. On average organizations plan to increase cloud computing spending by 16%.

-- Private cloud deployments are currently where the majority of information is stored in the cloud (24%), and the trend will continue to dominate 18 months from now (33%). Additionally, information is stored in other cloud deployment models including public cloud (10% currently, and 16% 18 months from now), community cloud (9% and 8% respectively) and hybrid cloud (8% and 14% respectively).

-- In addition to investing in cloud computing solutions, 68% of organizations strongly agree/agree that the IT organization had to grow skillsets to keep up with cloud developments.

-- Two-thirds of organizations (66%) believe that cloud computing is a very/somewhat important enabler of business innovation.

-- By a significant margin, the number one barrier to implementing cloud strategies is security (70%), followed by concerns about accessing information (40%) and concerns about information governance (37%).

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