Businesses are rapidly embracing cloud infrastructure (IaaS) to boost performance and innovation levels.
New research from Oracle reveals that, while negative perceptions around security, complexity and loss of control still present barriers to adoption, they are shown to be outdated myths, with those that have moved to IaaS proving the reality is far more positive.
Two-thirds (66%) of businesses that are already using IaaS to some extent, say it makes it easier to innovate. The same proportion says moving to IaaS has significantly cut their time to deploy new applications or services.
In addition, 64% say IaaS has significantly cut on-going maintenance costs and 59% of all respondents believe businesses not investing in IaaS will increasingly find themselves struggling to keep pace with businesses that are.
The research also found that experienced users are almost twice as likely to believe IaaS can provide world class operational performance in terms of availability, uptime and speed, compared to non-adopters.
Although some fear the move to IaaS may be complicated, 64% of experienced IaaS users say the move was easier than they expected.
Most respondents agree IaaS will have a role to play in their business within three years, with 44% saying they will run most or all of their business IT infrastructure on IaaS.
Just 10% of respondents believe IaaS will still have little or no role in their business in three years.
Cherian Varghese, vice-president and MD: Africa at Oracle, comments: “When it comes to cloud adoption there has always been a case of perception lagging behind reality. Cloud is still relatively new to a lot of businesses and some outdated perceptions persist.
“We are now seeing high levels of success and satisfaction from businesses that are saving money, cutting complexity and driving exciting innovation thanks to cloud infrastructure. Those resisting the move need to challenge the perceptions holding them back because the longer they wait, the further ahead their competitors will pull.”
Oracle partnered with Longitude Research to survey 1 614 IT professionals in Australia, Germany, India, Italy, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea and the UK about the state of their cloud infrastructure implementation and how they expect to use the technology in the coming years.