Having recently released the latest edition of our yearly Claranet Research Report, our third, I wanted to look back at its history and address some of the changes in attitudes that have occurred in that time.
We set up the Claranet Research Programme in 2011, shortly after I joined the company, with the aim of exploring the ways that IT leaders were configuring their technology in light of the rise of cloud.
At the time, cloud, in various forms, was positioned in the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ in Gartner’s hype cycle. It was clear cloud was on the cusp of mainstream adoption, so we felt it made sense to begin a programme that monitored this changing approach to the consumption of IT, and tried to make sense of individual businesses’ strategic decisions.
Many of the findings we uncovered in our first report demonstrated a degree of scepticism toward cloud. The 300 IT leaders we interviewed could see the theoretical benefits of cloud technology but adoption was tempered by fears around cloud’s less understood characteristics. Just 54 per cent of businesses were using some form of cloud in 2011. By the 2013 survey this figure had grown to 74 per cent.