Most Important Apps Last to Move to Cloud

It makes intuitive sense that the most mission critical applications are slower to move to the cloud. The same is true of virtualization. What shop wants to virtualize or cloudify the apps their company relies on most unless they are 100 percent sure they will be safe, perform well and offer some kind of economic or IT benefit?

That supposition is now being backed by research commissioned by MSP Claranet, who finds there is still overall resistance to the cloud in many quarters.

By the end of next year a minority of businesses, some 22 percent, will have put their IT infrastructures in the cloud.

IT operations management fares a bit better, with 26 percent of those surveyed planning to have this all moved by the end of 2014.

Accounting and finance apps will have moved to the tune of 32 percent by the end of next year, along with 30 percent of asset management installs.

"Our research has already shown that organizations have significant concerns about the security of their data should they adopt cloud services,” said Michel Robert, managing director at Claranet. “This is a major factor in the differing rates of migration between business-critical operations and other applications. Many organizations are finding that hybrid solutions that combine dedicated and multi-tenanted cloud services with traditional IT hosting are the best fit for their needs, so addressing such concerns will be crucial."

Less critical apps are faster to move. Some 51 percent of e-mail systems will be in the cloud in 19 months, “59 percent will have migrated advertising and online marketing services to the cloud, and 61 percent will have migrated their e-commerce web apps, while web portals will be cloud-based at two thirds (67 percent) of organizations,” the research reports.

It is up to the vendors now to convince that, in the cloud pool, the water is fine.

“The fact that only 22 percent of respondents will have moved their IT infrastructure over to a public or private cloud by this time next year is a sign that vendors need to do more to build trust. As cloud service providers, we need to recognize that moving infrastructure to the cloud is a complex process, and that we must reassure customers by demonstrating our capabilities to support migration and integration. We must also acknowledge that mixed private and public cloud services, or hybrid cloud, are essential to meeting diverse business needs,” piped up Claranet.

More Research

Research from the U.K.-based Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) offers similar findings. The Cloud Industry Forum research finds healthy overall pickup for cloud services, even while there are few wholesale migrations. “By the end of 2013, over 75 percent of U.K. businesses will be using at least one cloud service formally, and 80 percent of current cloud users will have increased their spend in this model of IT delivery,” CIF said.

Interestingly, the top reason for the cloud is saving money. In the past, respondents chose operational flexibility as their number one reason.

The area least likely to move to the cloud? Employee data, CIF said.