In a recent post, I shared users’ perceptions of cloud benefits and challenges from our most recent IDC IT Cloud Services Survey. In this post, I’ll show what these same IT and line-of-business executives say about their likeliness to adopt the cloud services model for different IT applications, workloads and services.

Once again, the survey was fielded, from the IDC Enterprise Panel of IT executives and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues.

Organizations Are Likely to Consider Cloud Delivery for Many IT Offerings

We asked the panel to rate their organizations’ likelihood – on a 1 (very unlikely) to 5 (very likely) scale – to pursue the cloud model for a variety of IT applications, workloads and services. The chart below shows the percentage of panelists responding 3, 4 or 5 – that is, neutral to very likely.

[...read more...]

15 Comments »

This year’s IDC IT cloud services survey reveals many of the same perceptions about cloud benefits and challenges as seen in last year’s survey. But there are a few interesting shifts this year, driven largely by: 1) budget pressure from the challenging economy, and 2) a growing sophistication in users’ understanding of cloud services.

This year’s survey was fielded, like last year’s, from the IDC Enterprise Panel of IT executives and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues. The respondent population is very similar to that of last year’s survey, validating comparisons with last year’s results.

Economics and Adoption Speed Still Top Benefits; Standardization Moves Up

This year’s survey shows, once again, that economic benefits are key drivers of IT cloud services adoption. Three of the top five benefits were about perceived cost advantages of the cloud model: pay for use (#1), payments streamed with use (#3) and shift of IT headcount and costs to the service provider (#5).

[...read more...]

18 Comments »

Everyone knows that one of the top cloud services model benefits, according to users, is the ability to stream payments out over the offering’s useful life, rather than paying the entire cost up-front. But I still found it intriguing when IDC colleague Jennifer Koppy recently presented additional data points that support the strong economic appeal of the cloud model. [...read more...]

1 Comment »

One of the most common questions I’ve been asked in the past several months has been “How will the global recession impact the pace of adoption of Cloud Computing?”.

My gut reaction has been that the economic crunch would certainly amplify the economic benefits of the cloud services model, and therefore accelerate IT cloud services adoption. Some data from a user survey my colleague Stephen Minton published earlier this year substantiates that view. [...read more...]

2 Comments »

As part of our ongoing research into Cloud Computing, IDC recently conducted a survey of 244 IT executives/CIOs and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues about their companies’ use of, and views about, IT Cloud Services. In part 1, we looked at current and future adoption of IT cloud services. In part 2, we looked at users’ views about the key benefits and challenges of IT cloud services.

This post, part 3, identifies the most important attributes users want in their preferred IT cloud services providers. [...read more...]

2 Comments »

As part of our ongoing research into Cloud Computing, IDC recently conducted a survey of 244 IT executives/CIOs and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues about their companies’ use of, and views about, IT Cloud Services. In part 1, we looked at current and future adoption of IT cloud services.

This post, part 2, looks at users’ perceptions of the key benefits and challenges of IT cloud services. [...read more...]

12 Comments »

As part of our ongoing research into Cloud Computing, IDC recently conducted a survey of 244 IT executives/CIOs and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues about their companies’ use of, and views about, IT Cloud Services.

This specific post looks at the current and future adoption of a variety of IT offerings delivered as cloud services. (Subsequent posts will look at users’ perceptions of the key benefits and challenges of IT cloud services, as well as what they want most from suppliers of IT cloud services.) [...read more...]

10 Comments »

At IDC Directions 2008, David Tapper spoke about how Web 2.0 and globalization are profoundly transforming the way companies source (and deliver) IT and other services. Within this broad theme, David explored which technologies companies see as most critical to transform themselves for this emerging world of flexible service delivery and consumption, citing a recent IDC survey of 236 line-of-business (LOB) executives and 268 CIOs and other IT executives. Here’s what he showed:

[CLICK on IMAGE to ENLARGE]

This list of technologies is not an exhaustive one, but it does include some of the major ones I see organizations increasing their investments in today. Here are three of my takeaways from this survey: [...read more...]

7 Comments »

This morning I’m presenting at IDC Directions 2008 in San Jose on “Enterprise IT in the ‘Post-Disruption’ Era”. Among the research I’m sharing are findings from a recent IDC survey of line of business executives (LOBs) and CIOs about their biggest “wants” for 2008.

Here are two of the slides, the first looking at what LOBs want from their CIOs, the second looking at what CIOs want – in turn – from their IT suppliers: [...read more...]

1 Comment »

Not surprisingly, business IT spending is typically driven by CEOs’ priorities. Accordingly, to understand the drivers of business IT spending for 2008, IDC surveyed business executives about their CEOs’ top agenda items for the coming year.

In both our 2006 and 2007 surveys, Customer Care and Product/Service Innovation ranked #1 and #2, respectively. This year, given widening economic concerns, it is not surprising that Sales Productivity (which ranked #4 last year) has jumped to #1, just marginally ahead of Customer Care, and nudging Product/Service Innovation to #3. [...read more...]

7 Comments »