INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Enterprises over-spending by more than US $ 8.75 million on cloud services
Couchbase , provider of a leading modern database for enterprise applications , has released research showing that factors such as inflexible pricing plans , management tools that don ’ t give the level of control users need and data not being stored where it needs to be , are adding more than 35 % to enterprise cloud costs . With a typical enterprise spending more than US $ 33 million a year on cloud services according to the research , this represents more than US $ 8.75 million that could be saved or spent elsewhere if enterprises and cloud service providers can solve these challenges .
The survey of 650 senior IT decision-makers found :
• More than one-third ( 36 %) of enterprises said cloud services adopted in the last three years had not met expectations , while 56 % said past cloud decisions had made Digital Transformation projects more difficult in 2021 and 48 % more expensive .
• The factors adding to costs included not having enough insight into spend or ways to optimise costs ; the need to improve security and compliance functionality ; inflexible pricing plans that don ’ t give enterprises what they need in a single package ; management tools that don ’ t give the control needed ; data not being stored where needed to meet regulatory or performance requirements ; and vendor lock-in , meaning enterprises cannot use the specific cloud infrastructure they want .
• 61 % of enterprises have had to restrict their Digital Transformation ambitions because of challenges with cloud services ; while 58 % have chosen cloud services that did not give the ability to scale the business to meet demand .
• 95 % of enterprises said that increased movement of infrastructure to the cloud is ‘ inevitable ’.
“ There ’ s no denying the impact of the cloud , from giving large enterprises increased scalability and agility , to giving smaller enterprises access to services and applications they could never implement in-house ,” said Ravi Mayuram , Chief Technology Officer of Couchbase .
“ Businesses believe they are getting what they need , or else we wouldn ’ t be seeing this seemingly unstoppable momentum . The question is whether they could be getting even more – US $ 8.75 million is too much to just be a cost of doing business .
“ If enterprises raise their expectations and service providers address inefficiencies , they could open up new opportunities for Digital Transformation – or simply reduce their costs .”
Despite the costs and challenges they face , enterprises are optimistic about the cloud . Almost every respondent is confident that their cloud services are giving them the levels of security , availability , performance , cost-effectiveness , control , scalability and compliance they need .
Asked to identify their top concerns around new cloud infrastructure , security of data was identified by 43 % of respondents , followed by managing data in the cloud ( 33 %) and future-proofing to meet future digital needs ( 31 %), while 30 % are concerned about keeping costs under control in the future . p
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