90% of US Enterprises to Increase or Maintain Annual Spend on Cloud Computing in 2016 – Clutch

The majority of enterprises in the US plan to increase their spending on cloud computing by as much as 50% in 2016, according to a new study conducted by Clutch, a B2B research firm.

At the same time, nearly 30% will maintain their current spending, and only 6% will reduce their cloud computing budget. This spending pattern indicates a growth opportunity for cloud service providers in the enterprise market.

Clutch surveyed 300 IT professionals who work at medium and large enterprises using a full-service cloud computing platform and found that 47% identified increased efficiency as the main benefit of cloud computing.

Analysts confirm that the value enterprises derive from cloud infrastructure directly influences spending patterns.

“Spending on the cloud has increased because companies realize they are getting a lot of value,” said Jason Reichl, CEO, Go Nimbly, LLC. “The cloud is building ROI faster and with better business accuracy, so companies are willing to reinvest in it every year.”

The highest priority cited for enterprise cloud usage is file storage, at 70%, followed by backup and DR (62%), application deployment (51%), and application development and testing (46%).

The survey suggests that cloud service providers can appeal to enterprises by leveraging features that correspond to these prioritized tasks.

“The ROI of file storage on the cloud is pretty straight-forward. Every company needs file storage,” said Duane Tharp, VP of technical sales and services, Cloud-Elements. “The ease of adopting the cloud for file storage needs enables rapid adoption in this space as opposed to other use cases for the cloud.“

Clutch’s enterprise cloud computing survey included 300 enterprises with more than 100 employees. The study also measured the cloud computing services used and the cloud infrastructure implementation processes practiced.

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