Over the past couple of months at K2 we have been putting together our latest study, entitled: “Sourcing IT services "for the journey": The impact of Cloud on Outsourcing. We have done this by:
- Conducting interviews with CIOs
- Collating the findings from our Executive Leadership Briefings for CIOs
- Running larger scale surveys across our CIO Research Forum membership
- Interviewing vendors and ‘dissecting’ their strategies and offerings
In total, we have spoken to well over 100 important decision makers about outcome-based contracting, Cloud ecosystems, and the adoption of SaaS and business service platforms. We’ve begun to finalise the analysis (all CIO Research Forum members will receive notification when the final study is live and ready to read) and some of the initial statistics – not surprisingly - are quite interesting.
For example, of those surveyed, 16% are already using desktop services delivered from the Cloud and expect to expand this type of delivery during the next year. Furthermore, the results suggests many more organisations are readying themselves to follow suit – see the chart below.
In sum, our initial findings show that 2011 is fast becoming the year of the practical Cloud – a year when real projects get underway. One FTSE 100 CIO told us: “Two years ago Cloud was ‘interesting’ and we would only have considered using it tactically – for example, to construct an informational website for a specific campaign. But now our thinking has moved on and we’re starting to consider where the scale play will come in.
The whole Cloud is starting to crystallise quite healthily. We are now starting to see services that one would actually want to take - by vendors that one has some confidence in.” Notably, these are not the words of a trailblazing company in technology terms. A very large company, yes – and one that is typically happy to make investments in new technologies once they are proven and the value can be clearly demonstrated.
If you are a member of the CIO Research Forum you will shortly be able to access the research study. If you are a vendor and would like to learn more about the research and how it might help you, please contact Kate Hanaghan, Research Manager at K2 Advisory – kate.hanaghan@k2advisory.com
