IBM Study Reveals Business Benefits of Cloud Computing

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that organizations gaining competitive advantage through high cloud adoption are reporting almost double the revenue growth and nearly 2.5 times higher gross profit growth than peer companies that are more cautious about cloud computing.

The findings are from a recent survey conducted with more than 800 business decision makers and users worldwide, says IBM.

IBM’s survey also revealed that the cloud’s strategic importance to decision-makers, such as CEOs, CMOs, finance, HR and procurement executives, is poised to double from 34 percent to 72 percent – vaulting over their IT counterparts at 58 percent.

The survey found that one out of five organizations is ahead of the curve on cloud adoption and achieving competitive advantage – not just cutting costs and driving efficiency – through cloud computing.

These leading organizations see the benefits of using the cloud — they are 170 percent more likely to use analytics extensively via cloud to derive insights for better business decisions.

In addition, IBM’s research found that leading organizations are looking to the cloud to differentiate them from their competitors. In fact, they are 136 percent more likely to use cloud to reinvent customer relationships.

To get a global snapshot of how organizations are using cloud computing, the IBM Center for Applied Insights conducted a survey of 802 cloud decision makers and users.

Forty percent are C-level executives (28 percent CIOs and 12 percent other C-suite roles). Evenly split between business and IT functions, participants span 24 industries and 13 countries, including both growth and mature markets.

They work in enterprises of varying sizes – 21 percent with 10,000 or more employees and, at the other end of the spectrum, 26 percent with less than 1,000 employees, says IBM.

By 2017, according to IBM, the public cloud services market is predicted to exceed $244 billion. Companies are looking to capitalize on this fast growing opportunity around the cloud for business transformation.

IBM has invested more than $6 billion in more than a dozen acquisitions since 2007 designed to accelerate its cloud initiatives, including 10 since 2010, says the company.