A Quarter of Companies Say They Use Cloud Computing

Only 28 percent of companies polled in the U.S. say they’ve adopted cloud computing, according to a new study from CDW (News - Alert).

Among those organizations that have jumped on board the cloud bandwagon, most have migrated only application at a time and most expect to devote no more than one-third of their IT budgets to the cloud.

Among the 1,200 IT professionals surveyed for the study, 84 percent say that although they’ve implemented at least one cloud-based application, they don’t yet see themselves as “cloud users” or administrators of cloud computing within their organizations.

The types of applications and services most commonly migrated to the cloud include e-mail (50 percent of users), file storage (39 percent), web and video conferencing (36 and 32 percent, respectively), and online learning (34 percent).

Among the cloud users polled, 84 percent said they did manage to cut application expenses by hopping onto the cloud. On average, such users reported saving around 21 percent each year on applications that were bumped to a cloud environment.

Overall, the professionals surveyed said that only 42 percent of their current services and applications are capable of being moved to the cloud.

Those who considered themselves cloud users said they anticipate spending no more than one-third of their IT budgets on cloud computing by 2016 and expect to shave around 31 percent off budgets by adopting cloud-based applications. Those who identified themselves as non-cloud users expect to spend a bit more than one-quarter of their budgets on cloud computing and save around 23 percent in another five years.

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