$414 billion
But only with deep levels of adoption... (Profit benefits manifest only after 60% of cloud adoption)
...and thoughtful decisions in your cloud deployment. (Exceptional performers prefer hybrid cloud arrangements)
To better understand how companies can use cloud for better performance, Infosys surveyed more than 2,500 business and IT executives across five countries and 12 industries, between November 2020 and January 2021. The findings backed up what we all already had sensed: Cloud adoption continued to accelerate, doubling every two years, and has grown to touch all aspects of business. More interestingly, the survey revealed that cloud could deliver new capabilities that impact profit growth.
Cloud is no longer about saving time and money. New research from Infosys shows that businesses stand to add $414 billion of annual profit by using Cloud to increase their speed and capabilities to gain a competitive edge.
Financial Services and insurance
High Tech and manufacturing
Healthcare and life sciences
Consumer packaged goods, retail, and logistics
Telecom and utilities
$ in Billions
Australia / New Zealand
Europe
US
$ in Billions
Infosys’ Cloud Radar research found that the highest performing businesses had annual profits growth that correlated with using cloud to:
Connecting
cloud performance
to profits
Surveyed the cloud adoption and performance of 2,500 respondents, representing businesses with revenue more than US $500 million across 6 countries and 12 industries
Interviewed cloud experts to interpret the data and identify the most important variables
Built model that identified correlations between profitability and the following variables:
Identified that improving performance in Cloud Speed and Cloud Capability could increase profit growth by up to 11.2 percentage points year on year
Applied model to known financial and economic data on businesses in the regions surveyed, normalized for differences in the sample distribution
Concluded that up to US$414 billion profits could be gained by achieving exceptional levels of cloud performance
Enterprises can achieve these profit boosts regardless of industry. However, we found that profitability only manifests when enterprises have moved heavily into the cloud and taken appropriate decisions on how to arrange and manage their cloud systems. Specifically, speed and capability gains only kick in when an enterprise shifts 60% or more of its systems to the cloud.
AI allows businesses to improve performance through increased intelligence, data-driven processes, and a personalized end-user experience. Enterprises harnessing the power of AI invariably shift more to the cloud. Among other uses, cloud can help build data platforms that consolidate and surface enterprise data. AI models can then unleash the value of data in a new way by making it more usable by business functions.
The Infosys Cloud Radar 2021 survey asked executives how cloud is empowering their business across four areas of competency: speed, capability, security & resilience, and scale. We scored responses on a scale of 0 to 100 and grouped them into four cohorts: Exceptional, highly effective, effective, minimally effective. The average Cloud Radar score across the sample was 64. American companies showed the strongest cloud performance, with more companies ranking in the top two performance cohorts. A larger-than-average proportion of enterprises from Australia and New Zealand scored in the second-highest highly effective cohort.
It's easy to over-spend on the cloud. The Cloud Radar survey found that respondents with stronger performance and broader multicloud systems also expressed greater confidence in accurately estimating the cost of their cloud arrangements.
Cloud Radar respondents turned most frequently to private cloud – 41% of the time overall. Yet, enterprises in our top two cohorts showed a preference for hybrid multi-cloud arrangements. Hybrid cloud provides businesses with greater flexibility by moving workloads between clouds.
More than half of the companies in our survey say that in 2022 they will have moved a majority of their IT systems and business functions to the cloud. Defensive or maintenance-related cloud priorities allowed companies to keep the lights on and sustain their businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic. Offensive or progressive priorities (speed, scale, capacity) that took a back seat last year are set for a comeback by 2022.
The Infosys Cloud Radar survey found that enterprises are harnessing cloud to power industry-specific solutions and develop better strategies for emerging use cases.
Explore
the Cloud Radar
Experience
How does your enterprise compare with exceptional cloud performers? How do you stack up against competitors and businesses in your region?
The Infosys Knowledge Institute helps industry leaders develop a deeper understanding of business and technology trends through compelling thought leadership. Our researchers and subject matter experts provide a fact base that aids decision-making on critical business and technology issues.
To view our research, visit Infosys Knowledge Institute at Infosys.com/IKI.
To know more about our cloud offerings, visit Infosys Cobalt at Infosys.com/Cobalt.