Cloud Computing Will Fuel Economic Recovery: Survey

Cloud computing and its inherent flexibility will help pull organizations out of the economic slump and fuel recovery, according to a recent survey commissioned by cloud infrastructure and hosted IT provider Savvis.

According to the survey, which was conducted by international research firm Vanson Bourne and queried more than 600 IT and business decision makers in the U.S., U.K. and Singapore, 68 percent of respondents said cloud computing will help their businesses recover from the recession.

Despite the silver lining, the survey found that companies are still feeling the pressure to do more with less, as budgets are reduced. Fifty-four percent of respondents said the biggest issue they face is the demand for lower costs and more flexible IT provisioning.

In its second year, the Savvis survey found that confidence in the power of cloud computing and its ability to cut costs has organizations optimistic. The survey found that commercial and public sector respondents expect cloud usage to slash IT budgets by an average of 15 percent, while a handful of respondents expect that savings to hit more than 40 percent in the near term.

"Flexibility and pay-as-you-go elasticity are driving many of our clients toward cloud computing," Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer at Savvis, said.

The survey also found that 96 percent of IT decision makers are as confident or more confident that cloud computing is ready for enterprise use now than they were in 2009. Also, 7 percent of IT decision makers said they use or are planning to use enterprise-class cloud computing solutions within the next two years.

From a geographical standpoint, the survey revealed that Singapore is currently leading the cloud charge, with 76 percent of responding organizations leveraging cloud computing. Meanwhile, the U.S. follows with 66 percent and the U.K. with 57 percent.

Respondents from the U.S. and from Singapore, 30 percent and 42 percent, respectively, cited the ability to scale up and down on the fly to manage fluctuating business demand as the biggest benefit of cloud computing. In the U.K, the top cloud computing driver is the lower total cost of ownership, with 41 percent of respondents saying that is the biggest catalyst for the cloud.

Despite the confidence surrounding cloud computing, security still remains a key adoption barrier, with 52 percent of survey respondents who don't use cloud computing citing security of sensitive date as a key concern.

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