53 percent of companies expect cloud to drive increased revenue over the next two years, according to a Cisco study conducted by IDC.
1 percent of organizations have optimized cloud strategies in place while 32 percent have no cloud strategy.
The IT study is based on market research conducted with IT decision makers in 3,400 firms across 17 countries that are implementing private, public and hybrid clouds in their IT environments.
Incidentally, Cisco is building a portfolio of private and hybrid infrastructure and as-a-service solutions.
“The new IDC study shows that 44 percent of organizations are either currently using or have plans to implement private cloud and 64 percent of cloud adopters are considering hybrid cloud,” said Nick Earle, senior vice president, Global Cloud and Managed Services Sales, Cisco.
The study found that organizations elevating cloud maturity from the ad hoc, the lowest level to optimized, the highest, results dramatic business benefits, including:
# revenue growth of 10.4 percent
# reduction of IT costs by 77 percent
# shrinking time to provision IT services and applications by 99 percent
# boosting IT department’s ability to meet SLAs by 72 percent
# doubling IT department’s ability to invest in new projects to drive innovation.
Organizations are gaining an average of $1.6 million in additional revenue per application deployed on private or public cloud. They are also achieving $1.2 million in cost reduction per cloud-based application.
Companies have gained additional revenues largely due to the result of sales of new products and services, new customers, or selling into new markets. Increased innovation by shifting IT resources from traditional maintenance activities to innovative initiatives also contributed to the growth in revenues.
Up to 70 percent of respondents expect to migrate data between public and private clouds (or among multiple cloud providers) and have high security and policy requirements, Cisco said on Wednesday.
Companies in the United States and Latin America have the greatest percentage of repeatable, managed or optimized cloud strategies, while Japan have the fewest.
The study notes the percentage of organizations with mature cloud adoption in each country:
# 34 percent USA
# 29 percent Latin America Region
# 27 percent UK
# 22 percent France
# 21 percent Germany
# 19 percent Australia
# 19 percent Canada
# 18 percent Korea
# 17 percent The Netherlands
# 9 percent Japan
Manufacturing has the largest percentage of companies in one of the top three adoption categories at 33 percent, followed by IT (30 percent), finance (29 percent), and healthcare (28 percent).
The lowest cloud adoption levels by industry were found to be government/education and professional services (at 22 percent each) and retail/wholesale (at 20 percent).
By industry, professional services, technology, and transportation, communications, and utilities expected the greatest impact on key performance indicators (KPIs) across the board, Cisco said in its Cloud study.
