Emerging Markets Are Upbeat on Cloud

The sweeping changes driven by cloud and the Internet of Everything (IoE) are upending traditional models of IT consumption in dramatic ways.

In order to shed new light on these trends and their impact on IT, Cisco® Consulting Services (CCS), in partnership with Intel®, conducted a wide-ranging study. We explored the powerful changes affecting IT consumption at all stages — how businesses plan, procure, deploy, operate, and govern IT services. We also focused on the ways in which lines of business (LOB) — human resources, sales, and other areas that are end users of IT — are altering overall IT consumption.

Some of our most striking findings related to the differences in perception between developed and emerging markets. The “Impact of Cloud on IT Consumption Models” study surveyed 4,226 IT leaders in 18 industries across nine key economies during March and April 2013. For our purposes, “emerging markets” included Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Russia,; developed markets were represented by Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States.

In all markets, cloud is overwhelmingly seen as a good thing. Despite the challenges and added complexity that cloud brings to IT organizations, a strong majority feels that the business upsides outweigh the negatives. For example, 83 percent of respondents believe that cloud will positively impact IT planning. In addition, 81 percent see a positive impact from cloud on “IT funding and procurement.” Similar percentages apply across all other IT consumption lifecycle stages.

But a key difference between emerging and developed markets becomes apparent when we explore some of the core drivers for cloud. In developed economies, the number-one business driver for cloud is lowering costs. While cloud is seen as a mechanism  for cost takeout, it also affords the ability to “pay as you grow” and achieve more predictable cost controls.

In general, however, the emerging economies featured in our study are more upbeat about cloud and the impact it can drive for their companies. They are investing heavily in what they see as the transformational potential of cloud. For these emerging economies, the number-one cloud adoption driver is increasing business productivity and agility.

IT leaders in our survey believe they will retain much of the oversight and authority that has characterized their relationship to the business in recent years — with generally higher percentages in emerging markets. Fifty-six percent globally saw IT becoming more centralized (in Asia Pacific, this rose to 79 percent), rather than more fragmented as LOBs’ role in IT consumption grows. The belief is that greater centralization will yield greater efficiencies and consistency of policy, user experience, etc., than is afforded by a more distributed IT function (i.e., in which LOBs have their “own IT group.”) Fifty- seven percent of respondents overall saw the size of the IT organization and its headcount increasing. In Asia Pacific, this was 80 percent; in Latin America, 69 percent.

Yet respondents in emerging markets were nearly twice as likely to project an increase in the size of their IT organization than were their counterparts in Europe and North America, where just four in ten foresaw a cloud-driven increase in headcount.

Given the attitudes registered toward the issues of centralization and organizational size, respondents in Europe and North America are clearly more reticent about what cloud will mean for the resources they oversee than are their peers in emerging markets.

These finding are consistent with other recent Cisco studies, including “The Financial Impact of BYOD” and the “IoE Value Index,” both of which have uncovered a high level of interest in the potential for innovative IT use among respondents from emerging markets. This may also reflect the tendency of emerging markets to “leapfrog” to new technologies, skipping, for example, the legacy landline architectures that still predominate in some developed nations.

In addition, the overall optimism of our survey respondents in emerging markets indicates a greenfield for cloud adoption in those markets.

To download the full report, please visit: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/re/IT-Consumption_PoV/

To navigate the report findings by region, please visit: http://share.cisco.com/brightfuture/

For more information on the Internet of Everything, please visit: http://www.internetofeverything.com

For more information on the Cisco cloud strategy, please visit: http://www.cisco.com/go/cloudstrategy

For more information about Intel in cloud computing, please visit: http://www.intel.com/cloud