In the wake of COVID-19, enabling remote work has required IT teams to rapidly lean into cloud technologies to keep their businesses operating smoothly. A new survey suggests that cloud usage continues to rise, and what was a sudden shift will become a permanent pivot for most organizations. Despite many countries planning for a return to physical offices and workspaces, 60% of IT leaders are continuing to increase their overall cloud usage and 91% are changing their cloud strategy as a result of the current economic climate. The study, conducted by Snow Software, the global leader in technology intelligence solutions, surveyed 250 IT leaders around the world to find out how cloud usage and investment decisions have evolved during the crisis.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has turned cloud into an essential service for many organizations while also highlighting the complexities of managing cloud cost and usage”
Overall, 82% of those surveyed said they have increased their cloud usage over the past several weeks in response to the pandemic. The majority of respondents – 60% – said their cloud usage continues to increase, indicating that cloud consumption patterns are still in flux even after the initial surge in remote work. Additionally, 66% reported that they will continue to use the cloud services and applications they implemented during the crisis once employees return to the workplace. Surprisingly, only 22% reported they saw an initial increase in cloud usage but that it had leveled off.
While Zoom and Teams dominated the headlines, cloud infrastructure was actually the biggest driver of this increase. When asked about how their company’s use of cloud services and applications changed in response to the current crisis, 76% said they have increased their use of cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and even private cloud. More than half of respondents (55%) noted an increase in collaboration tools like Slack, Teams or Google Chat, while 52% of those surveyed indicated an increase in cloud-based video conferencing software like Zoom, Cisco WebEx or GoToMeeting. While many companies may have already relied on these productivity services ahead of the crisis, the surge in cloud infrastructure represents a more fundamental shift in how organizations operate.
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