A recent Oracle survey has revealed that poor cloud application integration hampers the productivity of more than 50% of businesses.
In partnership with Dynamic Markets, Oracle surveyed 1 355 executives from companies with revenues of $65 million or higher, from 17 countries across the world, including SA. A wide range of business functions was represented among respondents, including research and development, sales, marketing, customer relationship management, finance and HR.
The results for SA indicated that 69% of businesses experienced staff downtime in the last six months caused by poor cloud integration. Half of the survey respondents attributed missed project deadlines or similar problems, and 86% indicated that they consider cloud integration vital to their business.
Globally, 54% of respondents indicated downtime due to cloud integration. This was also reported to affect departments not using cloud applications, whose productivity was hampered by those departments that are. Three quarters of respondents stated that poor integration had hampered their ability to innovate, due to cloud applications being isolated from the rest of their business functions.
The report also indicated that a majority of businesses (83%) had been unable to utilise departmental cloud applications to their full extent, with 25% of those who had this problem citing poor integration with other applications as the cause. A third of respondents felt that a lack of customisation options was a particular problem, while 36% felt that an inability to integrate cloud applications with company-owned software was a greater issue.
One of the main drivers for the deployment of cloud applications is the supposed enhancement of operational agility and effectiveness, which may, in reality, be countered by the diminished productivity caused by poor cloud integration. Because operational silos may hold organisations back from the improved productivity the cloud is capable of offering, integration of cloud applications is vital, says Oracle.
The majority of respondents (81%) stated that integration is a priority, and 50% say they have integrated to the extent that they are able to access other departments' cloud applications. However, the other 50% of respondents have yet to achieve this.
"Cloud applications have the power to dramatically improve business performance while reducing costs, but only if they can work across the business," says Rex Wang, VP of product marketing at Oracle. "Subscribing to a cloud service may be relatively straightforward, but how this application fits in with the rest of the enterprise, including on-premise systems and other cloud applications, must be thought through."
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