Cloud adoption rises 10 percent between 2011 and 2012

It seems that more and more businesses are understanding the many benefits afforded by cloud computing. According to a recent survey of 1,364 IT managers and users of business intelligence (BI) platforms conducted by global technology research institution Gartner Inc. at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2012 in Los Angeles, Syndney and London, 27 percent of respondents have already implemented or plan to implement cloud services to enhance their company’s BI.

Only 17 percent of respondents reported cloud adoption when the same survey was conducted in early 2011.

According to the study, respondents identified three primary areas in which cloud computing was perceived to positively impact a company’s data management and performance.

The first was identified as time to value, because the scalability inherent in cloud services can be deployed for information retrieval and analysis faster.

Another catalyst to cloud adoption for BI was cost, in that cloud computing offers enhanced cost-efficiency immediately as well as in the future since IT costs down the road will be diminished.

Finally, cloud services were seen in the study as beneficial as they include prebuilt expertise that substitutes for a lack of the technical skills that would be required for similar analytics solutions to be undertaken in house.

“Business users are often frustrated by the deployment cycles, costs, complicated upgrade processes and IT infrastructures demanded by on-premises BI solutions,” said Gartner’s research director, James Richardson. “SaaS Software as as Service and cloud-based BI is perceived as offering a quicker, potentially lower-cost and easier-to-deploy alternative.”

Considering the benefits that IT managers plan to reap from cloud computing, a business’ decision makers should consider consulting with a provider of VoIP telephony services who can also provide cloud computing solutions. Such a managed IT service will be able to tailor a specific program to the needs of an individual company to be sure the appropriate infrastructure is created to generate viable business outcomes with cloud technology.

Another catalyst to cloud adoption for BI was cost, in that cloud computing offers enhanced cost-efficiency immediately as well as in the future since IT costs down the road will be diminished.