Let’s do an industry stat roundup!
The results from TechRepublic Premium surveys found that SMBs are still using an array of internal servers, cloud servers, hybrid cloud servers, and SaaS for their IT and business needs. Yet, in 2021, 46% said they rely on on-premise systems, a decrease from last year’s response of 63%.
This isn’t a surprise as businesses must improve access and collaboration for remote-based employees. Survey results also show that 26% of respondents use more than one cloud service, an increase from the 17% reported in 2020.
And, 43% said they will tighten their budgets due to COVID-19. Although this is still relatively high, it’s a decrease from last year, when 62% forecasted budget changes.
A survey of 2,834 subscribers to the Programming and Infrastructure & Ops newsletters published by O’Reilly Media finds that nearly half of respondents plan to migrate 50 percent or more of their workloads to the cloud in the coming year. Just over half of respondents (55 percent) are also still running workloads on traditional on-premises infrastructure, but nearly half of respondents are now pursuing a cloud-first strategy.
After questioning around 9,300 IT workers, Skillsoft found that 76% of IT leaders have skills gaps in their departments, an increase of 145% since 2016. more than half of IT leaders are claiming these skills gaps are adding stress to organizations, with 36% saying skills gaps are preventing them from meeting business objectives, and 42% saying it’s stopping them from meeting expected quality objectives.
And one detail from Gartner I missed yesterday — The cloud market, sustaining its momentum, is projected to reach $474 billion in global revenue next year, up 16% from 2021, Gartner projected Wednesday. And Gartner research shows 25% of SaaS is underutilized or over deployed.
And in another Gartner report, the analyst says that Shadow IT is declining – replaced by SaaS, sanctioned by IT or approved by the business unit. The concept – business-led IT.
Story – SMBs are still using a mess, but it’s changing, down nearly 20% in a year. All sources today (and Gartner yesterday) point to more and more cloud workloads. Budgets may not be generous, but coupled with a skills gap, that may be unrealistic. And best of all, this SaaS cloud push is solving the Shadow IT problem…. Which I was never convinced was really a problem for the business anyway.
Shadow IT is caused by a failure of those responsible for IT, not of the business. If technology departments, internal or external, aren’t solving the problem, the business isn’t going to sit around and wait.
I’m a bit of a broken record this week – cloud cloud cloud. It’s the disconnect I see between what a lot of providers are talking about and where I see the market that’s causing that noise to grow. I was asked recently about contract strategies, and it exposes one of those disconnects. If a provider is pricing based on per-device approaches… that ignores the more important element of SaaS. Sure, maybe it’s implied… but implied sure isn’t cloud first. It’s that disconnect I’m thinking a lot about.