What Does the Future Hold for the Cloud?

The early forecasts are in and it looks like the cloud is going to occupy an even more prominent place on the to-do lists of IT leaders in the coming years. That’s one of the takeaways from a pair of recent studies which examined the projects companies expect to invest the most in over the next few years. 

TechTarget’s annual “IT Salary and Careers Survey” asked high-ranking IT leaders to name the area that would likely be commanding their attention the most in 2015, and the cloud was right at the top of that list, tied for the number one spot. Cloud computing shared the honor with security, as each captured 21% of the vote. The two are intertwined, so it isn’t surprising they were running neck-and-neck. As decision makers consider moving service workloads offsite, their attention (rightfully) shifts toward protecting those workloads once they’re there.

The cloud has come a long way since last year’s study, where it came in fifth. Comparing the results from this year’s study to last year’s paints a pretty clear picture of just how much, and how quickly, cloud has become a top-of-mind issue for IT leaders.

And it doesn’t look like companies are interested in only sticking their toes in to test the waters. Many seem to be planning to dive right in and entrust mission-critical apps and programs to the cloud over the course of the next two years.

More than four out of five (81%) organizations say that within two years they’ll be using IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS to support their enterprise management software, according to “Simplify and Innovate the Way You Consume Cloud,” a report by Forrester Consulting and Infosys. That means crucial business elements like enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, and product life-cycle management could all soon be making the move to the cloud.

What’s driving this shift? If you guessed pure cost-savings, you might want to try again. Roughly 77% of businesses identified the need for increased agility as the key driver behind their cloud adoption efforts. 

Also high on the docket for companies: Developing a cloud plan. Instead of handling cloud initiatives one at a time or as they come up, 66% of organizations said a better approach would be spending the time to craft an in-depth cloud strategy for their IT teams.         

Coming up on the horizon

Over the course of a series of blog posts, Arraya Solutions will share its thoughts and expertise on a number of the most-pressing cloud concerns looming in 2015 and how Arraya can help address them. Topics will include:   

  • What else does the future hold for the cloud?
  • What are Arraya’s strategic partners doing to address businesses’ shifting cloud needs?
  • How the cloud is changing the face of company data centers, and
  • Complications which can slow down cloud adoption and how to avoid them 

Be sure to check back here regularly for more on this series. In the meantime, visit www.ArrayaSolutions.com or contact your Arraya sales rep to learn more about how your company can utilize Arraya’s experience with the cloud to make your own migrations and projects run that much more smoothly.

Arraya Insights