Monday 7th July, 2014

Cloud computing has achieved mainstream deployment in the UK according to the latest research from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), with some 78 per cent of organisations formally adopting at least one Cloud-based service.

The research, conducted in June 2014, polled 250 senior IT and business decision-makers, indicated a nine-point increase or 15 per cent growth over the last research project conducted in September 2013.

CIF suggests an annualised growth rate could be nearer 20 per cent by the end of September 2014. Since the first research was conducted in 2010, UK Cloud adoption has grown by 61.5 per cent.

Large private enterprises are showing the highest rates of adoption at just over 80 per cent, whilst the sub 200 employee organisations are around 75 per cent, followed by the public sector at around 68 per cent.

The research also recognises that the majority of organisations (85 per cent) operate on-premise servers or data centres. The co-existence of on-premise and Cloud services by nature leads to a Hybrid IT environment for the majority of organisations.

Key findings include:

• Of those using Cloud services, 45 per cent use only one Cloud service formally, 28 per cent use two Cloud services, 13 per cent use three and the remaining 14 per cent use four or more
• 79 per cent of organisations now formally consider Cloud as a part of their IT strategy
• 61 per cent of organisations reported running Windows Server 2003, which formally goes end of support in July 2015 and will drive a new wave of opportunity for Cloud services adoption over the next year

Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF, stated: “Over the next year we can say with some confidence that first time Cloud adoption will increase by 12 points – or 15 per cent in real terms.”

“This means that 90 per cent of all businesses in the UK will be formally using at least one Cloud service by the end of 2015.  In the near term adopting will be driven in part by the end of support for Windows Server 2003 that concludes in July 2015.”