Executives See Organizations Moving To Cloud-Based Services Within Two Years

Business and government executives overwhelmingly expect their organizations to use Cloud computing within the next two years, according to a survey by KPMG LLP.

Ninety percent of the executives and 68 percent of the middle managers said they are using or plan to use Cloud-based services within two years.

Eighty-two percent of all the respondents, which consisted of executives, middle managers and staff, said that migration to the Cloud raises a broad set of issues around business transformation that should be understood and managed across the entire organization.

When asked to rate the importance of four factors driving a company or organization to pursue Cloud-based activities, 84 percent of those surveyed rated "technical" (ie., scalability, security) as important or extremely important, while 78 percent viewed "economics" (cost savings, shifting capital expenditures to operational expenditures) as important or extremely important, and 76 percent placed "functional" (ie., capabilities, accessibility) in that category, with 66 percent rating "strategic" factors (ie., business process transformation, speed to market) as important or extremely important.

In addition, 79 percent of executives, middle managers and staff said that Cloud is a viable option for enterprises to be more agile and cost competitive and 74 percent said that organizations adopting Cloud can experience long-term competitive advantages.

Comment from Steve Hill, KPMG's National Innovation Leader: The survey results reflect wide acceptance of Cloud-based services among executives, who are increasingly recognizing the Cloud's strategic, business value. Those surveyed also said that experimentation will be required to fully understand the value of Cloud-based operations, and this approach, they noted, will bring challenges that need to be addressed. Those surveyed clearly recognize that in the migration to Cloud computing, strategic business considerations today decisively trump yesterday's technology discussion. Cloud-enabled environments, particularly community models, may facilitate paradigm changes in business models and in the core drivers of competitive differentiation.

About the survey: KPMG's survey sample comprised 174 executives, middle managers and staff from business, government and academia who completed surveys onsite at the Oracle OpenWorld 2010 trade show in September.

Contact: http://www.us.kpmg.com