SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Jan 16, 2014) - 2nd Watch, a global leader in building, deploying and managing AWS-based IT operations for the enterprise, today released findings from its 2013 Cloud Services Adoption Rate Survey. With 133 IT operations professionals responding, the survey revealed that 93 percent of enterprise business units are using cloud-based services and that 61 percent of those are choosing, managing and funding them on their own. In addition, 71 percent of enterprise IT departments were experiencing demand to deliver cloud services to business units, but the 74 percent providing them are delivering only 37 percent of the services. Forty-three percent polled said their IT departments plan to develop cloud services brokerage models in their quest to deliver 75 to 100 percent of cloud services by 2016.
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"This survey demonstrates that enterprise business executives recognize the effectiveness of cloud services and aren't willing to wait for IT departments to create and deploy applications that can help them to achieve their goals," said Matt Gerber, EVP sales and marketing, 2nd Watch. "For IT departments to retain their relevancy now and in the future, they'll have to find ways to leverage cloud platforms that enable fast development and deployment of needed enterprise services."
One-hundred percent of all respondents said they were experiencing various challenges in their push to deliver cloud services. One of the primary challenges is a lack of resources, with 22 percent reporting that they do not have enough staff or finances to keep pace with internal demands. Sixteen percent reported that they are concerned about security, and 12 percent said that a lack of corporate standards is creating a problem.
"These findings come as no surprise; we anticipated that a lack of resources would be chief among the hurdles," continued Gerber. "Enterprise IT departments that adopt cloud services brokerage models are on the right path, as they'll be able to leverage platforms that will respond to the challenges they say are standing in the way of meeting demand."
In addition to the above findings, the survey revealed:
- Fewer than 8 percent of enterprise business units are not using cloud services.
- Slow application deployment is a problem within enterprises; 28 percent reported that they were turning to the cloud for a solution.
- On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being least and 5 being highest, 63 percent of enterprises said demand for cloud services ranged between 4 and 5.
- Forty-four percent of respondents reported that 75 to 100 percent of their organizations' cloud services were being delivered through an external cloud such as AWS.
- Operations departments were the largest consumers of cloud services (60 percent); sales and marketing were second at 22 percent.
Demographics and Methodology
The 2013 Cloud Services Adoption Rate Survey was conducted in December 2013. The 133 respondents were all US-based and ranged in title from CIO, to executive vice president, to IT manager, to developer. Organizations surveyed were in a wide range of industries, with the highest percentage in high tech (37 percent). The survey was conducted using an independent online service.
About 2nd Watch
2nd Watch is a global leader in building, deploying and managing Amazon Web Services (AWS)-based IT operations for enterprise customers. 2nd Watch assists customers in evaluating the economics of moving IT operations into AWS, designs and builds highly reliable and scalable AWS-based enterprise IT platforms, and provides software tools and management services that enable enterprises to deploy, manage and optimize cloud-based IT operations infrastructure. 2nd Watch has effectively moved over 2MW of enterprise data center capacity into the AWS cloud as part of 300+ platform and data center migrations. 2nd Watch is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and is headquartered in Seattle, WA with offices in San Francisco, New York and Atlanta. For more information, try the TCO Calculator at http://aws.amazon.com/tco-calculator, email info@2ndwatch.com, visit www.2ndwatch.com or call 1-888-317-7920.