TORONTO, ON – While Canadians businesses continue to have concerns with public cloud computing, an IDC study released Tuesday says more Canadian enterprises are associating cloud services with a higher level of business performance.
The IDC study, commissioned by Telus, found that 73% of Canadian organizations that have adopted cloud have overcome data governance challenges and reported improved data compliance as one of the main benefits. These companies also said that using cloud was meeting their financial expectations. “The survey indicates that the number one priority for Canadian businesses is improving customer service,” says Tony Krueck, vice-president, business solutions marketing at Telus, in a release. “The IDC survey found that an impressive 81% of Canadian businesses reported lowering the cost of IT due to cloud adoption.”
According to the study, Canadian businesses view cloud as a progression in IT services and that cloud users consider themselves to be leaders in their markets – 66% and 64% believe that they significantly outperform their competition in terms of revenue growth and profitability, respectively. Further, companies that integrate cloud into their decisions about software, systems and better ways of doing business are 25% more likely to view themselves to be more innovative and progressive than their peers.
The study found that 58% of businesses are moving towards fully sourcing applications and infrastructure to third parties, and 52% said that they would use cloud as their primary method for all new IT deployments.
For companies which mostly support IT internally, the study found that while 55% are already considering hosting and other services as part of their business moving forward, only about one-third are considering transitioning to cloud services.
Cloud adoption in Canada is estimated to grow by 25% and hosting by 9.6% compared to a growth rate of 3.5% for the rest of the Canadian IT market, according to the study.
The IDC/Telus study surveyed 250 Canadian business and IT leaders from large Canadian companies (500+ employees) across a range of industry sectors.
