Market watchers predict cloud spending will increase five to seven times, outpacing overall tech spending in the next three years. But cloud adoption will no longer be driven solely by the promise of lower IT costs. Businesses will move to the cloud for different reasons than in the past, according to Tim Minahan, Chief Marketing Officer, SAP Cloud. Here are three more trends Minahan highlighted during a recent SAP Radio broadcast:
1. Not everything moves to the cloud
As companies accelerate cloud adoption in 2014 and beyond, they aren’t getting rid of everything. Instead they will look to extend their existing technology investments. Deutsche Bank is a prime example. As keynoters of a recent Ariba Live event, Deutsche Bank demonstrated how they extended the SAP environment with Ariba Cloud Apps and Ariba Networks to connect and collaborate with over 4,500 suppliers around the globe. “Not only will this enable Deutsche Bank to conduct fully automated transactions processing in collaboration with those partners but also to enable them to manage their cash in innovative ways that were impossible in a solely on-premise world,” said Minahan.
2. Innovation trumps total cost of ownership
The days of building a business to move to the cloud based solely on TCO are over. “Companies are looking to invest in the cloud as their innovation platform as a way to achieve new processes and insights to be able to run their business in an entirely new way - not just to do the same old things using a different delivery model,” said Minahan. T-Mobile, for instance, is surrounding its core on-premise CRM environment with cloud applications to engage customers in a new model for social care. T-Mobile is not just responding to customer requests through traditional channels they are actively listening to customers on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere in order to improve their overall customer satisfaction and renewals. “They have a much better net score than bigger brands by engaging customers where they are and responding to their issues quickly,” said Minahan.
3. Platform matters
Businesses will scrutinize big picture IT environments and drive simplification across all layers of the stack. “They will also look at broader cloud processes and expect these applications to look, perform and interact with each other seamlessly on a common cloud platform that unifies all their applications, data and business processes in a similar user experience.”
This story originally appeared on SAP Business Trends.
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