E-mail is the most prominent service that organisations are putting in the cloud, according to the findings of the ITWeb-Business Connexion Managed Services Survey.
The study ran for two weeks on ITWeb Online and attracted 162 respondents. It probed the respondents which service in their organisations would they prefer deploying in the cloud.
E-mail, with 70%, is the most popular service that most organisations want in the cloud, it emerged. This was followed by service desk (48.46%), customer relationship management (47.69%), virtualised desktop (46.15%), and Web conferencing (44.62%).
Commenting on the finding, Julian Liebenberg, GM for services at Business Connexion, says organisations have accepted that while the e-mail interface is experienced at the end-user, the e-mail infrastructure exists in a data centre or hosting environment which most never see or touch.
“Therefore, moving the infrastructure from a client computer room into the cloud changes very little or nothing for the end-user,” he adds.
The survey also found out that hybrid cloud is the most popular cloud platform, chosen by 34.62% of the respondents. Own private cloud came second at 23.08%. On the other hand, public cloud attracted 6.15%.
Liebenberg concurs with the finding, saying “hybrid cloud offers balance between true cloud benefits and private cloud security.”
Most organisations are considering adopting cloud computing, the survey also discovered. The majority (28.77%) said they are considering applications for the cloud. This was followed by 24.66%, who noted that they have embraced the technology and are acquiring services while 19.86% stated that on-premise ownership is still preferred.
According to Liebenberg, from a total cost of ownership perspective, cost benefits offered by cloud-based applications compared to private applications far exceed cost benefits offered by cloud-based infrastructure compared to dedicated infrastructure.
Asked about their outlook on software-as-a-service (SaaS), it emerged that most of the organisations (34.25%) are already using these services while 21.92% said they are investigating acquiring SaaS services.
Some 19.18% said they have no plans for SaaS for the next six months while only 9.59% said they have no plans at all.
“Consuming SaaS realises the most benefits of cloud computing while at the same time removing many CIO concerns towards this new operating model,” notes Liebenberg.
“The underlying reason for a slower than expected adoption rate of SaaS resides much more in the licensing regime of the software vendors than in the technical capability of these applications. As more vendors adopt a multi-tenant licensing regime and as more application development houses develop cloud specific applications, we see the adoption of SaaS accelerating.”
The study also discovered that the majority (29.59%) of organisations are making use of managed services. This was followed by hosting (26.63%) and multi-sourcing (15.98%).
Liebenberg believes managed services offer complex IT architectures infrastructure and services in a commoditised and standard way. Therefore, he explains, it is not only easier to understand what the corporate is contracting for, but organisations can also more easily compare the value proposition of different service providers.
“In addition, this industrialisation of IT drives up efficiencies through large economies of scale, thereby driving down costs. In short, managed services are more cost-effective and their value proposition expressed in business terms.”
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