What to Expect When Moving to Cloud! In a recent survey, Longitude Research interviewed 730 IT leaders. Respondents came from a variety of industries across 13 countries, and from companies with annual revenues of one billion USD or greater. The research found that companies with the greatest cloud exposure report the highest levels of confidence in the cloud, and the greatest increases in productivity and competitiveness. More valuable insights, higher levels of innovation, and lower costs were also reported. Reassuringly, those with the highest levels of cloud exposure reported the highest levels of cloud security.   Some of the most interesting findings from the survey:  

1. It’s no longer a question of when, but how you move to the Cloud – 72% say moving Applications, DevOps, and workloads to the cloud is integral to the organization being competitive
2. Bridging Cloud Skills gap – 60% believe they have the right skills in house to fully utilize cloud-based applications
3. Moving to Cloud boosts customer satisfaction with faster time to market – 69% believe that moving to cloud will enable their organizations to meet their customers’ needs more effectively
4. First, find a good starting point – when shifting workloads and applications into a cloud environment, companies must map a migration path. Workloads can be prioritized according to how easy they are to migrate – allowing extra time to prepare complex workloads.
5. Cloud enables data-model experimentation and better insights – 77% are more able to generate better data insights – the primary motivation for companies managing data in cloud.
6. Increased innovation and competitiveness are up the shot - 6 in 10 reported that innovation levels have increased, or are expected to, since moving testing to the cloud. Over half said their competitiveness has improved. Better application development is also attributed to the shift.
7. Reducing cost is main driver for cloud integration – 50% of respondents pointed to improvements in their ability to integrate cloud and on-premises applications, connect applications through the integration of data streams, and add functionality and services to applications.
8. Cloud helps drive better insights and uncover new possibilities.
9. Cloud is the safest place for data - The research shows that the more progress a company has made with the cloud, the more confident they are about the security of their data and systems. Cloud-mature companies believe that the safest place for their data is not in data centers, but in the cloud. Rather than weakening their control, their move to the cloud is enhancing it.
10. The same tools used for security can effectively monitor performance – cloud tools that detect and prevent security threats can be used to monitor application performance.

  The fact that there are so many emerging cloud-based technologies is a clue to how to approach the cloud journey—whether you’re at the start, or progressing well along it. Cloud is a process of discovery, and there are many entry points and possible phases.