Cloud Usage: UK Cloud Survey 2017

Cloud Usage

Serviceteam IT UK Cloud Snapshot Survey 2017

Cloud has become the buzzword in not only the technology sector, but across all industries. At the same time, the uncertainty regarding cloud adoption, and cloud usage, is also increasing due to the multitude of problems currently facing the UK. Such challenges include the implementation of GDPR, the uncertainty of Brexit and the unprecedented increase in cyber security attacks.

How much has moved to the cloud?

Overall the cloud usage results from this question revealed that 40% of respondents to the survey had moved 20% or less of their applications and services to the cloud and over 60% of respondents had moved less than 40% of their IT services to the cloud. However, 30% of respondents have moved between 61% and 100% of their applications and services to the cloud and 14% had already migrated over 80% of their services to the cloud. When analysing the data on a sectoral basis, 52% of respondents from the insurance sector had moved 40% or less compared to the technology sector, where 44% had moved less than 20% of their applications and services to the cloud.

The response to this question therefore corresponds to the findings of the CIF. It is clear to see that many companies are a long way from achieving 100% migration to the cloud and there is therefore potential for cloud usage expansion in the future.

60% have moved less than 40% of their IT services to the cloud

20% or less of their applications

less than 40% of their applications

Over 60% of their applications

Over 80% of their applications

What percentage of your applications and services have you moved to the cloud?

93% increase in Microsoft Azure sales

14.6bn annual Amazon Web Services revenue

Cloud service providers offer services and applications to businesses, which are hosted in a data center accessible through a network. There are quite a number of service providers to choose from, however, there are only very few major players currently operating in the market offering cloud services currently being used by businesses in the UK. According to Data Center Knowledge9, there has been an increasing rise in the use of third party data centers due to the many benefits in which surround this service, such as reduction in costs, reduced risk of outages and increased focus on the core objectives of the business. Firms in the UK understand the benefits of outsourcing to a third-party data centre as half of the respondents across all sectors said that they are currently using a third-party data centre. According to the HBR Oracle Report10 26% cloud usage of those surveyed use numerous cloud services, which correlates with the findings from the Cloud Snapshot Survey. As a result, the rate of cloud adoption is progressively increasing year on year as well as 80% of companies increasing their use of “cloud managed services”.

In April 2017 Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet all reported quarterly results on the same day. Amazon was the only company to present clear numbers for its infrastructure business showing an annualised run rate of $14.6 billion. Microsoft bundles its Azure business into the Intelligent Cloud division, which includes various other servers and cloud services. In total, that business grew 11% to $6.8 billion. While Microsoft does not split out Azure’s revenue, it does give a growth number. In the quarter ended March 2017, sales increased by 93%. Giving Microsoft a Commercial Cloud business with annualised revenue of $15.2 billion, including Office 365. Alphabet did not provide a figure for the Google Cloud Platform, including it only in the $3.1 billion figure left after removing advertising revenue from their $24.5 billion quarter. Other providers of cloud platforms such as HPE Helion and Oracle Cloud made up a tiny percentage of the total cloud usage.

What cloud provider is being used?

Many of the respondents to the survey selected that they use more than one cloud service. In addition to the use of third-party data centres, 38% of respondents stated they used AWS and 36% currently use Microsoft Azure. This supports the research conducted by Enterprisetech, where it was found that the most popular cloud service was Microsoft Azure, closely followed by Amazon Web Services.

The most popular response regarding the technology (52%), utilities (46%) and insurance sectors (50%) is a third-party data centre This supports the idea that more companies are seeking to find alternative ways to host their IT services and many are beginning to turn third-party data centres. The most popular service in relation to the marketing sector is Google Cloud with a 50% response rate. Within the scientific research sector, 61% of respondents said that they have their own data centre, which was far higher than in any of the other sectors cloud usage.

50% use a Third-Party Data Centre

AWS: 38%

Microsoft Azure: 36%

Google Cloud: 13%

Oracle Cloud: 2%

HPE Helion: 0%

Hybrid Cloud: 16%

Multi Cloud: 0%

In-House: 36%

Own Data Centre: 27%

Third-Party Data Centre: 50%

Other: 8%

Which cloud provider are you currently using?

What cloud services are used?

From our results we found that Productivity (Office 365, Google Apps etc.) was the most widely used service, with a 77% response rate. This finding can be seen to correlate directly with the findings from the report by Netskope. The responses from the individual sectors also correlates with this, as productivity was selected by a large number of respondents in each of the sectors surveyed.

As the results show, there was some variation in terms of the different sectors and their cloud services as some services which were used extensively in some sectors are not used at all in others. Despite this, the common theme which ran throughout was the extensive use of productivity cloud services within businesses, highlighting the usefulness of this service to all businesses and sectors included in the survey.

77% use Office 365 or Google Apps

Productivity:77%

Storage and Delivery: 61%

Database: 56%

Analytics: 37%

Security & Identity: 37%

Compute: 37%

Enterprise Apps: 35%

Management tools: 23%

Which cloud services do you use?

Overall the survey suggests that the cloud is being used in the UK by a large proportion of companies for a variety of business functions, with growth in cloud use expected in many companies in the future. Despite the external threats, companies understand the benefits that cloud technology offer and it is for this reason that many are continuing to expand their use of such services.

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Analysis, Results & Sectors