Report: Many businesses nearing completion of cloud migrations

For organizations large and small, the transition out of on-premises data centers and onto public cloud platforms has entered its latter stages and may be nearing completion within the next several years. 

That’s a primary conclusion of the 2024 CDW Cloud Computing Research Report which surveyed nearly 1,000 technology leaders in business, government, education and other sectors, found that about 45% of organizations have already shifted at least half of their applications onto public clouds. When asked about their plans for applications not yet on the cloud, 35% of organizations said they’ll move at least half of those to the cloud within three years. 

In short, by 2027, many organizations will be maintaining least three-quarters of their applications on public clouds. 

The reasons are clear, even if some organizations are surprised by them. Reflecting on the public cloud’s benefits, respondents cited many of the factors that had caused some businesses to move slowly toward adoption: The cloud delivers improved reliability and recovery capabilities (according to 57% of respondents) and offers better security (according to 48%). At the same time, organizations say they are enjoying the benefits originally promised by cloud’s proponents: It makes data more accessible for remote users (55%) and makes the business more agile and efficient overall (51%). 

That does not mean that cloud comes free of challenges. Many struggle to integrate and secure existing on-premises solutions with newer cloud technologies, with 49% citing “maintaining the security of on-premises assets” and 41% listing the “inflexibility of on-premises data centers” as top challenges. 

Others struggle to balance their desire to access the amount of cloud capacity their businesses need with budget concerns. For example, half of businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees cited cost as a constraining factor, while almost as many (44%) said they have difficulty with “limited capacity for data storage.” 

“The people who are starting to see benefits are the ones who have gone from lift-and-shift activities to lift-and-improve activities,” says Roger Haney, CDW’s chief architect for software-defined infrastructure, in the report. “Then there’s still a whole step to go, in which we modernize their workloads and move people into a cloud-native mindset.” 

While noting ongoing challenges, most businesses say the cloud is living up to its promises.  

The research makes clear that the cloud is a critical factor in organizations’ use of artificial intelligence. Two-thirds of all respondents say they are using AI now. Of those, at least 48% say they are running AI workloads on public, private or hybrid cloud platforms, while 32% use on-premises data centers.