An Information Services Group report claims that enterprises are increasingly embracing a cloud-first approach to their IT investments.
The “2021 ISG Provider Lens Public Cloud – Services & Solutions Report for the UK” said that enterprises are looking to service providers to help them migrate more of their workloads to the public cloud.
It finds many large UK enterprises interested in hybrid cloud environments, which enable continued use of legacy IT systems, even though an increasing number of companies anticipate a time when they would migrate all of their IT assets to the cloud. Small and medium-sized enterprises, meanwhile, are looking at infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) options to replace their depreciated hardware assets.
ISG partner Jan Erik Aase said that the move to the cloud is expected to be the primary driver of IT market growth in the UK in the coming years.
“Even if ‘cloud-everything’ is still out of reach for many U.K. enterprises, the momentum is growing, with many companies increasingly migrating more of their IT workloads to the cloud and taking on more complex migration projects”, he said.
Businesses across the UK are seeing the value of cloud services and solutions to better meet customer needs, the report says. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many to consider public cloud services, as customer buying behaviour has shifted from physical to digital shopping. Companies see cloud adoption to stay competitive in the global market.
A growing number of UK companies are focused on implementing a multicloud approach. Many are outsourcing their multicloud environments and classic data centres to global and regional IT service providers, the report adds. By selecting the right technology and business partners, companies can focus on their core business functions and business expansion plans. In many cases, cost reduction is the primary driver for U.K. businesses to outsource their cloud services.
The report also sees a demand for integrated AI-led cloud managed services from U.K. enterprises. Managed services are growing in importance as businesses look to multicloud setups to drive their digital transformation journeys. Enterprises do not wish to limit themselves to just one hyperscaler, because each one has strengths and different pricing; instead, they are more interested in creating the right partner ecosystem involving several cloud platforms and service providers.
There are some barriers to a multicloud setup, the report adds. Companies often seek help with orchestration, which involves several moving parts in a complex setup to be operated in the public cloud. Enterprises are also worried about public cloud vendor lock-in and about interoperability between two or more cloud providers. The whole caboodle needs a conductor.
The report noted that hyperscaler cloud providers becoming increasingly important in public sector’s digital plans.
The report sees public cloud service providers in the UK moving away from pricing based on time and materials and on key responsibility areas, with more service-level agreements now featuring output-based pricing. Under these SLAs, clients pay for the results obtained during the engagement. The trend toward outcome-based pricing is expected to continue as service providers face fierce competition.
The report names Rackspace Technology as a Leader in three quadrants and Accenture, Atos, AWS, CANCOM (Telefonica Tech), Capgemini, Claranet, Coforge, Computacenter, Ensono, Fujitsu, HCL, Hexaware, IBM, Infosys, Microsoft, TCS and Wipro as Leaders in two. Cloudreach, Cognizant, Google, Tech Mahindra and Unisys are named Leaders in one quadrant.
