Survey: 28 Percent of U.S. Organizations Maintain, Manage Cloud, CDW Finds 
CDW’s first Cloud Computing Tracking Poll found 28% of U.S. organizations are using cloud computing today, with most reporting (73 percent) their first step into cloud was implementation of a single cloud application. Respondents now implementing or maintaining cloud projects plan to spend no more than one-third of their IT budget (34%) on cloud by 2016.
CDW’s first Cloud Computing Tracking Poll found 28% of U.S. organizations are using cloud computing today, with most reporting (73 percent) their first step into cloud was implementation of a single cloud application.
CDW assessed the current and future cloud computing use in business, government, healthcare and education based on a survey of 1,200 IT professionals familiar with their organization’s use of, or plans for, cloud computing.
Respondents currently implementing or maintaining cloud computing said they plan to spend no more than one-third of their IT budget (34%) on cloud computing by 2016. They also said using cloud resources and applications would help them save about 31% of their IT budgets
Applications most commonly operated in the cloud are commodity applications including:
- E-mail (50% of cloud users)
- File storage (39%)
- Web and video conferencing (36% and 32%, respectively) and
- Online learning (34%)
Remarkably, the survey also found a whopping 84% said they used at least one cloud application, but don’t consider themselves cloud users who implement or maintain cloud computing.
CDW defines cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources like networks, servers, storage, applications and services that can be rapidly provisioned.
“Many organizations are carefully and selectively moving into cloud computing, as well they should, because it represents a significant shift in how computing resources are provided and managed,” said David Cottingham, senior director, managed services at CDW, in a statement.
Cottingham said organizations that plan carefully to move to the cloud can reap benefits that align directly with the goals of their organizations including consolidated IT infrastructure, reduced IT energy and capital costs, and ‘anywhere’ access to documents and applications.
Respondents also said they could operate about nearly half (42%) of their current services and applications in the cloud. Non-cloud users said they expect to spend about 28% of their IT budgets on cloud computing by 2016, and save 23% by using cloud computing resources and applications. Eighty-four percent of cloud users said they cut application costs on average by 21% moving to the cloud.
