In a research study hot off the presses, IDG looked into cloud-based productivity applications, their business benefits, and who in mid-sized companies is getting the most out of moving their everyday productivity applications to the cloud.
Just as I sat down to write this my brother called and coincidentally asked me what I use for productivity software, as he’s planning an upgrade for his and his wife’s PCs. I had to laugh – when family members are chiming in on technology issues I’m writing about I know there’s demand out there to look at new solutions.
As of this month, 7% of those organizations who have deployed at least one cloud-based productivity application have completely moved to the cloud for all their productivity software. Upgrades? Thing of the past. Version mismatch issues? Gone.
The top drivers for adoption among this crop of cloud enthusiasts were ability to have anytime, anywhere access to apps and data, higher employee productivity, and ability to deliver apps and data to any device. Mobility, Productivity, Devices. These factors not only define the cloud, they also define the world of Bring Your Own Device, which continues to rage throughout enterprises of ALL sizes.
Why are Cloud and BYOD always tied to closely together? I believe it comes to the desire to support the range of platforms while delivering a common experience to users, no matter what they choose to access apps and information. Since most of the organizations surveyed measure productivity in the amount of time it takes to perform tasks, having the ability to use the device at hand, whether desktop, smartphone, tablet or airport kiosk, can immensely improve that key measure – the productive output – of employees, especially if they’re on the go or remote.
And although the impetus for BYOD may have come from the road warriors or the CEO, Is should be no surprise that the initial decision to deploy cloud-based productivity software came mostly from IT. Rather than having to support several versions of software for a range of devices and hoping for plug-and-pray (not a typo) compatibility, the SaaS approach puts the onus on the software vendor to get it right out of the virtual box. Nothing like outsourcing problem resolution to vendors.
I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be talking about Cloud Computing. Regardless of your deployment model, that is on- or off-site, it’s starting to feel like a very large group of organizations, especially small and mid-sized ones, will turn to highly virtualized, easily provisioned services to implement their technology requirements. What we call Cloud
Computing today will soon just be “computing”.
Fire your software? Keep it? What’s your take?
See the full research presentation here: http://bit.ly/XVNPGx