‘High Cloud Exposure’ Companies Gain Scalability, Security Advantages

While cloud investment has emerged as common among organizations today, business and IT leaders in highly committed cloud companies are seeing a wide range of operational and competitive advantages, according to a recent survey from Oracle and Intel. The resulting “Cloud Insights” report indicates that, in general, these migrations bring greater scalability, agility and collaboration. And, in comparing “high cloud exposure” enterprises to their less exposed counterparts, additional benefits include improved software development, DevOps integration and cyber-threat detection. A total of 730 global C-suite and IT executives took part in the research. This slide show presents key findings from the survey, with charts provided courtesy of Oracle and Intel.

On average, just over 76 percent of enterprise apps were either developed in the cloud “from scratch,” have migrated to the cloud or are in the process of migration. Within three years, this average will increase to about 82 percent.

In citing top cloud initiatives, 93 percent of survey respondents said they have either already migrated data analytics to the cloud or plan to do so within three years. Just over nine of 10 said they have either already migrated the management of IT security to the cloud or plan to do so within three years.

Seven of 10 survey respondents said the cloud provides greater scalability, along with the agility to change according to business needs. Nearly the same number said moving to the cloud will enable their company to better meet the needs of customers and clients.

Two-thirds of survey respondents said the cloud opens up opportunities for collaboration. Nearly the same number said the cloud brings “clear” financial benefits.

Cost reductions were listed as the top benefit of moving apps and workloads to the cloud, as cited by 37 percent of respondents. The acceleration of business/IT innovation ranked second, as cited by 32 percent.

Security gaps present the biggest barriers to app/workload cloud migrations, as cited by 35 percent of survey respondents. The cost of cloud-specific tools, consulting and training ranked second, as cited by 30 percent.

When asked about software and feature development, 61 percent of survey respondents in organizations considered to have “high cloud exposure” said they are satisfied with their system management. Only 39 percent of those in “lower cloud exposure” companies said the same.

More than three of five survey respondents in “high cloud exposure” companies said their DevOps teams are integrated. Just 38 percent of those in “lower cloud exposure” make the same claim.

“High cloud exposure” organizations also gain advantages with analytics, as 65 percent of survey respondents at these companies said their analytics are mostly automated and/or enabled by machine learning. In contrast, only 28 percent of those in “lower cloud exposure” companies said this was the case for them.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents in “high cloud exposure” companies rate their cyber-security threat detection capabilities as “good” or “very good.” Just one-half of “medium cloud exposure” and 38 percent of “lower cloud exposure” organizations made the same claim.