Hybrid cloud-enabled transformation accelerates digital business: IDG Study

NEW DELHI: A new study by EMC Corporation has revealed the use of hybrid cloud as key to enabling digital transformation and competitive success in the digital age. Conducted by IDG Research Services, the study revealed that organizations today must ‘think digital’ to enhance customer experiences, increase flexibility, drive business opportunities, and decrease costs.

Globally, with 90% of respondents citing digital business as a top priority for the next one to three years, the survey revealed the transformative power of digital business as a key driver for IT today. In particular, businesses in India are looking towards hybrid cloud technologies to improve business continuity (88%), enable digital business transformation (88%) and faster IT services (86%).

The findings also indicated that hybrid cloud-enabled digital transformation have afforded organizations with increased IT agility while making the implementation of digital business initiatives faster, easier and less expensive. Furthermore, the survey also revealed the most aggressive hybrid cloud adopters to be the most advanced at digital transformation.

While the transformation to digital business is complex and requires time, 62% of India respondents indicated they’re well on their way to achieving their initial digital transformation goals with 9 out of 10 India respondents (94%) viewing hybrid cloud capabilities as important or critical to enabling digital business transformation.” The study reveals that organizations must ‘think digital’ to enhance customer experiences, increase flexibility, drive business opportunities, and decrease costs. With 92% of respondents stating that their organization’s competitive strategy calls for digital business initiatives and 90% calling digital business a ‘top priority’ for the next one to three years, the transformative power of digital business is a key driver for IT today.

Drivers behind these digital technology investments include: Improving the customer experience (87% of respondents indicated this was a critical or very important goal); Acquiring new customers (86%); Increasing innovation (82%); Enabling real-time business decisions (82%).

The transformation to digital business is complex and takes time, but 63% of respondents indicated they’re well on their way to achieving their initial digital transformation goals. That said, IT leaders are still facing hurdles including: Budget and resources (38%); Fragmented computing environments (30%); Lack of the right technologies (29%). To solve these challenges, IT leaders are turning to hybrid cloud environments, embracing a modernized infrastructure that involves two or more delivery models, including a traditional data center, a private cloud, a managed private cloud and a public cloud. A whopping 83% of respondents currently use or plan to use a hybrid cloud environment, and 73% agree that a hybrid cloud model creates a path to digital business.

The survey data indicates that digital transformation enabled by hybrid cloud helps organizations increase IT agility and makes implementing digital business initiatives a faster, easier and less expensive process. Furthermore, survey results show that, by reducing IT costs, hybrid cloud enables investment in digital transformation, and the most aggressive hybrid cloud adopters are also the most advanced at digital transformation. Of those surveyed, organizations with a significant number of hybrid cloud workloads are three times more likely than non-adopters to be approaching their digital business and infrastructure readiness goals.

Commenting on the report, Jeremy Burton, President, Products and Marketing, EMC Corporation, said, “Becoming digital is a priority for nearly every business on the planet. But how to get there is not as obvious. This study makes it perfectly clear that hybrid cloud – and the savings and agility it brings with it – is a key enabler to becoming a digital business.”