Enterprise SaaS Goes Mission Critical: Gartner

Businesses are placing more faith, and more mission critical applications, on the cloud, according to Gartner.

The IT market research firm announced today that it expects traditional on-premise software deployments to shrink to just 18 percent, compared to 34 percent today. In the absence of cloud-enabling updates or upgrades, today’s legacy software will remain on servers until it reaches the end of its useful life, added Gartner.

Cloud Storage and Backup Benefits

Protecting your company’s data is critical. Cloud storage with automated backup is scalable, flexible and provides peace of mind. Cobalt Iron’s enterprise-grade backup and recovery solution is known for its hands-free automation and reliability, at a lower cost. Cloud backup that just works.

SCHEDULE FREE CONSULT/DEMO

Attitudes toward cloud-delivered software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions have clearly shifted, noted Gartner research vice president Joanne Correia. Armed with survey data from organizations in ten countries, namely the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, the U.K., Germany, France, China, India, South Korea and Australia, she observed that many enterprises are no longer dabbling with cloud-based offerings.

“We’ve seen a real transition from use cases in previous surveys where early SaaS adoption focused on smaller pilot projects,” said Correia in a statement. “Today, the projects are mission-critical and production grade.”

Correia described Gartner’s findings as “an affirmation that more businesses are comfortable with cloud deployments beyond the front office running sales force automation (SFA) and email.” Yet cloud security concerns linger.

Gartner research director Laurie Wurster said in a statement that organizations are still worried about data breaches and application programming interfaces (APIs) with lax security when it comes to public cloud services. The NSA cyber-spying scandal isn’t helping matters, either.

“In addition, recent concerns of government snooping in the name of anti-terrorism and general privacy issues contribute to the lack of public cloud adoption,” she added.

Businesses are responding by driving increased adoption for private cloud solutions (46 percent) versus the public cloud (24 percent) over the next two years. Gartner observed that its “respondents’ cloud adoption behavior for software deployment suggests the majority of data centers are moving to private cloud deployment for implementation of new software,” said the research group.

While cost savings emerged as a key driver for increased cloud adoption (44 percent), rank-and-file IT staffers and managers have a different view of the cloud than CIOs and IT directors.

High-level technology executives were more likely to cite the cloud’s ability to drive innovation and promote more responsive business processes than their subordinates. “The conclusion is that CIOs are focused on using the cloud to establish a modern, innovative IT environment with operational agility and business advantage as key outcomes whereas business leaders (non-IT) still see the cloud as a means to save costs and may not yet have full appreciation for the business benefits or strategic opportunity of using cloud services,” stated Gartner.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  December 16, 2020

• AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  December 11, 2020

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020