A survey by IDG Connect, sponsored by Dell, asked European IT “decision makers” in organisations with 500 or more employees about their migration plans. The survey took place at the end of 2012 and in early 2013.
Here are the cloud migration plans for email:
- Migrate email to Office 365: 13%
- Migrate email to Google Apps: 8%
Unfortunately the survey does not cover other cloud providers for email.
What about usage of cloud servers?
- Plan to use Amazon virtual servers: 2%
- Plan to use Microsoft Azure virtual servers: 1%
- Plan to use other cloud providers for virtual servers: 9%
- No plans to use cloud servers: 88%
Surveys are (very) imperfect, and plans can change. Nevertheless, these figures suggest that migration to the cloud remains in an early phase.
A couple of further observations. One is that while the benefits of cloud computing are real – including multi-tenancy, scalability, lower maintenance cost, and arguably better security and resiliency – there are also downsides, in particular loss of control, and vulnerability to interference by outside agencies.
Costs might or might not be lower. There is sometimes an assumption that lower maintenance costs and greater elasticity must mean lower cost overall, but it does not always stack up that way.
On the other hand, I also wonder whether IT administrators protecting their internal organisations is a factor. If you ask an IT admin to assess the benefit of outsourcing a chunk of his work, will you get an objective result? Maybe not.
You can see the whole survey (which also has some eye-opening statistics about usage of Windows XP) here (registration required).
While I can’t see the PDF it wouldn’t really shock me to find Windows XP still in heavy use.
When I worked at BT Directory Enquiries their systems ran on Windows NT (with explorer disabled) and I doubt they will have changed as the system “just worked” (most of the time) and seemed tightly integrated to the virtual switchboard, the computer controlled your calls directly. It just wouldn’t make sense to change a working system when its functioning internally only.
It also never failed to amaze me how when moved to secondary school they were running Windows 3.11 when Windows 95 was out. Then when I LEFT school the IT training centre I attended was also STILL using Windows 3.11. You would think those are the places wanting to be the most forward thinking so that you have the right knowledge.
The fact is all companies become comfortable with what they have been using for a while and only upgrade when they absolutely must do so. The Internet age hasn’t done much to change that it seems.