12 July 2023

Whilst cloud adoption is still slow, over two-thirds (64%) of businesses believe that they will have more IT infrastructure in the cloud over the next two years. Surprisingly, despite recent buzz, AI is yet to enter IT leaders’ top five challenges, with them instead listing ‘resilient infrastructure’ in second place, ‘data storage’ ranking in third place, ‘operational technology’ in fourth place and finally ‘automation and robotics’ in fifth place.

Whilst concern amongst IT leaders around cloud adoption remains high, actual uptake is low, as Paessler’s research found that just 25% of UK and 19% of global storage infrastructure is in the cloud. In terms of sustainability, storing data in the cloud reduces the on-premises footprint associated with powering, cooling and maintaining hardware and data on local servers.

Levels of cloud adoption vary between industries, with 92% of government-related data being stored on-premises.This suggests there is still a belief that this is the safest way to store data and to protect it from being hacked, despite government clouds being designed to meet the compliance and security requirements of government customers. Unsurprisingly, technology firms have the highest level of cloud storage at 24%.

Other sectors surveyed include:

• Finance & financial services (23%)
• Education (21%)
• Healthcare & pharma (17%)
• Manufacturing (17%)

In addition to slow cloud adoption, Paessler also found that globally only 37% of companies have started to work on sustainable IT strategies. The Americas were the furthest behind, with just 26% starting to work on sustainable IT strategies and a surprising 52% of respondents stating it is not a priority yet. Whilst Scandinavian countries rank the highest, with 56% having started to work on sustainable IT strategies, followed by the UK & Ireland with 49%.

This year has witnessed an increase in organisations working on sustainable IT strategies with the number rising from 33% to 37%. However, despite growing awareness 15% (vs a mere 6% last year) believe that sustainability is ‘not at all important’ to their overall business agenda. Whilst IT admins may be focused on maintaining business continuity, it is important not to overlook the tools available to monitor environmental factors such as energy consumption, which could be a key factor in any sustainability strategy.

6 out of 10 of the respondents said it was important that their monitoring software provider was environmentally friendly, suggesting an interest in acting sustainably where possible, however, it is evident that there is room for improvement.

"It’s clear that cloud adoption is the number one challenge for IT leaders; it’s not that easy to lift and shift. Infrastructures are complex and it takes time to modernise,” said Martin Hodgson, regional sales manager, Northern Europe at Paessler AG. “While cloud may help to reduce the carbon footprint of a business enabling them to meet their sustainability goals, it has to be right for them. Paessler can monitor hybrid IT & cloud environments, which means we are ready to support cloud adoption whenever our customers are.”