Cloud migration is a priority for most companies

Cloud migration will be a priority investment for 70 percent of business leaders over the next year.

Beancounters at research outfit KCOM have added up some numbers and asked 250 C-level decision makers across several industries, including healthcare, government, and retail what they were thinking about.

About half of respondents said that their top priority in the next year will be digital transformation.

Of 68 percent of those surveyed, implementation of cloud-native applications will be a key focus in the next year, with 65 percent of respondents intending to invest in improving identity management services.

The report said public and private organisations were putting people at the heart of their digital transformation drive, with 80 percent stating that they would incentivise staff retention through training, accreditation and career development to sort out their innovation plans.

More than 46 percent of respondents thought failure was a good idea when it was spotted early enough to limit costs.

More than 72 percent of business leaders defined a project as a failure if it came in over budget, while 45 percent saw it as an inability to achieve the original designated outcome.

Stephen Long, MD at KCOM Enterprise, said too many companies are held back from delving into innovative projects because of a fear of failure.

“It is positive to see that organisations are embracing cloud technology as the path to innovation, and they recognise some of the challenges holding them back. Innovation involves pushing the boundaries of what is known and understood. Organisations must accept that failure plays a key role in doing this.

“Only by obeying Samuel Beckett’s dictum to ‘try again. Fail again. Fail better’ can companies truly unlock the value of the cloud and new ways of working”, Long said.