In 2018, IDG’s cloud computing study found that 73 percent of the 550 organisations surveyed already ran at least one application, or part of their infrastructure, in the cloud. The question for enterprises, IDG concluded, was no longer whether to adopt cloud but how.
Respondents came from the audiences of six IDG brands: CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, ITworld and Network World. All were involved in buying cloud services and used, or planned to use, cloud.
Complex environments and rising budgets
Cloud estates were becoming more complicated. In IDG’s 2018 data, 43 percent used hybrid cloud only and 12 percent multicloud only, while 30 percent used both. Half of respondents (51 percent) had begun to treat providers as a portfolio. That view was strongest in financial services and high tech, at 63 percent each, and weakest in education (41 percent) and manufacturing (43 percent).
Cloud took about 30 percent of IT budgets in 2018, against 28 percent in 2016. Average spending rose from US$1.6 million to US$2.2 million over the same period. Small and medium businesses went from US$286,000 to US$889,000, and enterprises from US$3.0 million to US$3.5 million.
IDG also reported that 38 percent of IT departments felt pressure to move entirely to the cloud. The figure was 44 percent at enterprises and 31 percent at smaller firms. Julie Ekstrom, then IDG Communications’ senior vice president, said organisations were mixing cloud delivery models and so had to manage several vendors.
An as-a-service shift
IDG put the average 2018 environment at 53 percent noncloud, 23 percent SaaS, 16 percent IaaS and 9 percent PaaS. Respondents expected that to become 31 percent noncloud, 33 percent SaaS, 22 percent IaaS and 14 percent PaaS within 18 months.
- SaaS: less time on manual updates and maintenance (62 percent) was the top driver.
- PaaS: savings on server and storage overhead (56 percent).
- IaaS: scalability (68 percent).
Web applications (49 percent) and collaboration tools (45 percent) were the workloads most often moved already. Disaster recovery and high availability (49 percent) topped the list of planned migrations.
Barriers: lock-in over security
Vendor lock-in was the leading obstacle at 47 percent. Data location and security each drew 34 percent. Security concern had fallen from 67 percent in 2015. Compliance worries dropped from 35 percent in 2015 to 26 percent, and information-governance worries from 35 percent in 2014 to 23 percent.
How the research continued
IDG Communications later became Foundry, which kept the annual study going. Its 2022 survey of 850 IT decision-makers found 60 percent saying cloud had helped them achieve sustainable revenue growth. It also showed respondents expecting the share of their environment in the cloud to rise from 41 percent to 63 percent within 18 months.
The 2023 edition, the study’s tenth year, covered 893 respondents. Foundry’s Stacey Raap said the pandemic-era acceleration was easing. Some 57 percent of organisations had stepped up migration over the previous 12 months. In 2024, in the study’s 11th year, Foundry reported that the figure had risen to 63 percent, with AI cited as a driver.