2nd Watch, a leading professional services and managed cloud company, announces the results of a survey on enterprise cloud trends. A key takeaway from the survey is that while COVID-19 has unquestionably altered the cloud strategies of enterprise IT executives, the vast majority are still moving forward with big-picture digital transformation initiatives – and most IT execs think they’ll see an increase in their cloud budgets to support these projects over the next 12 months.
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The 2nd Watch survey, 2020 Enterprise Cloud Trends, was completed by 100+ cloud-focused IT directors or above in companies with at least $500 million in annual sales and IT budgets of at least $50 million per year. 45% of survey respondents were from technology companies, 16% from financial services and 14% from manufacturing. The remaining 25% ranged from retail, oil and gas, and life sciences companies to CPG, media and entertainment, and “other” companies. 93% of respondents use at least two cloud platforms, with Microsoft Azure being the most popular primary platform.
Following are the report’s highlights and important trends:
Support for Remote Workers is the Top Enterprise IT Challenge. 82% of respondents said they’ve experienced cloud-related challenges and 77% said these challenges have caused them to alter their cloud strategies. 63% said the top challenge has been providing remote workers access to corporate systems. 57% said remote worker complexity/support was their biggest challenge, and 47% said that conferencing/collaboration systems haven’t worked as expected.
Number of Workers Who Need Cloud-Enabled Support is on the Rise. 50% of respondents said they’re accelerating the use of cloud to support remote employees. That’s because 58% of respondents said at least half of their company’s employees will become full-time remote workers in 2021, up from 47% before the pandemic began.
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Companies are Accelerating Digital Transformation and Cloud Use. 60% of respondents said they are prioritizing projects with potentially large payoffs, such as company-wide digital transformation, over cost-conscious projects. The reason: 47% said now is the time to position their company for the long haul. Meanwhile, 39% of respondents said they are accelerating the use of cloud to deliver digital products, and 34% said they are accelerating the migration of applications to the cloud.
Cloud Security and Cloud-Native Culture Change are the Top Priorities. 46% of survey respondents said they’re experiencing cloud security related challenges due to COVID-19. Not surprisingly, then, 75% said they’re prioritizing cloud security. Meanwhile, 60% of survey respondents said their top priority right now is cloud-native culture change (or DevOps), and 51% said the top priority is conferencing/collaboration, which likely reflects the growing need to support remote workers.
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