Discovering benefits and challenges of cloud for businesses

A study from Rightscale, a cloud management company, gives some interesting information on cloud computing in the context of ‘cloud maturity’ and how this affects business practices.

Cloud maturity is comprised of five sectors:

1. No plans
2. Cloud watchers – companies planning cloud computing
3. Cloud beginners – companies in their first project
4. Cloud explorers –  companies with cloud applications running
5. Cloud focused – companies with heavy use of cloud applications

As might be expected, enterprises are moving slower through the maturity stages, as opposed to the move agile SMBs – with just 17% of enterprises in the ‘cloud focused’ bracket, compared to 41% of SMBs running multiple cloud applications. This is down to the scale and exponential complexity of deploying to  greater numbers of employees in any type of organisational change. Nevertheless, depending on the type of application, this may be mitigated by easier roll-out of cloud applications.

Cloud maturity is also a useful concept to see the positives of cloud computing – with benefits such as business continuity, efficiency and availability varying depending on the level of cloud maturity. Similarly, the challenges associated with cloud also decrease with the greater experience that companies have with cloud computing.

The survey also found that ‘hybrid and multi-cloud implementations are today’s strategy of choice for the enterprise’ with 77% of responses have a multi-cloud strategy.

Overall, this study is a fresh look at cloud computing within business, and the benefits that cloud can bring as well as indicate the most appropriate strategy for your company in leveraging these benefits. If you fill out some details for your company, you read the full report here.