More than seven in 10 (71%) EMEA organisations are likely to move more of their business functions to the cloud in the coming years. This is according to a survey of over 1,200 senior IT professionals from across Europe, Middle East and Africa carried out by Equinix, the global interconnection and data centre company.
Despite more business moving to the cloud, 70% of these same respondents still perceive there are cybersecurity risks around cloud adoption. Large public data breaches have caused uncertainty among companies, leading to 45% of respondents focusing on improving their organisation’s cybersecurity as their biggest IT priority.
Cloud and cybersecurity considerations together are top of mind for IT executives across the region. For nearly half (48%) of the those surveyed, the adoption of cloud-based services represented one of the top two factors that will impact their business in the future — second only to cybersecurity risks and breaches (53%).
In Ireland, 64% of the 100 Irish respondents believe their organisation will move more to the cloud – 6% lower than the EMEA figure. An additional two thirds (67%) believe that proximity to cloud service providers is an important factor when choosing a data centre in Ireland.
In fact, cited by 29% of respondents, cloud service providers are the most likely organisations that Irish businesses will connect with in the future.
The rise in cloud adoption comes at a time when Irish businesses are seeing their data volumes explode. In the next three years, Irish businesses anticipate that their data volumes will surge by 72%. The growth in data has resulted in the average Irish enterprise spending €1.35M on data storage, processing and handling in the last 12 months.
Worryingly, however, 27% say their organisation doesn’t have the right infrastructure in place to deal with increasing data volumes.
Commenting on the research, Managing Director for Ireland and Emerging Markets at Equinix, Maurice Mortell said, "As Irish businesses become increasingly digitised, they are consuming and producing record amounts of data. We can see that enterprises are investing heavily in getting value out of this data and ensuring it works best for their business."
He added, "However, there is still a large proportion of companies that don’t have confidence in their digital infrastructure. In today’s world, digital transformation is non-negotiable – it is essential for survival and success."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
