Shift to cloud in UK 'gradual'

On-premise application delivery models will remain as the primary option for UK businesses over the next three to five years, according to a new survey.

The research, conducted by SAP, concluded momentum for the cloud or an "on demand" model was definitely growing but it was at a slower pace than others would have you believe.

Of the 250 chief information officers (CIOs) interviewed, almost three quarters (71 per cent) said current investments were still focused on on-premise, with the figure only dropping to 66 per cent over the next year and staying at 51 per cent in three to five years.

Conversely, on demand only accounted for 17 per cent at the moment, the respondents claimed, and would only grow to 28 per cent over the next few years.

Tim Noble, managing director of SAP in the UK and Ireland, said: "From this research it's clear that over the next five years we are going to see British companies favouring a hybrid approach to software. On-premise will still play a key role but we will see rapid growth in on-demand and on-device solutions."

The top driver towards the cloud was scalability, according to the respondents, with 62 per cent citing it as the main benefit. Other positives included deployment speed, cost savings and environmental benefits.

However, the biggest concern holding people back was [a href="https://www.itpro.com/620344/it-security-must-change-for-the-cloud" target="_blank"security[/a], with more than half (53 per cent) citing this as a worry when it came to the cloud.

A third of respondents however "remained unconvinced" altogether about moving to a cloud model and didn't think the benefits of cloud computing had been proven.