If the tech­nol­o­gy com­mu­ni­ty had any­thing to say about it, ​“cloud” might be the Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies Word of the Year. Those of us who work in the SAP world gen­er­al­ly hear this word at least once a day, along with one of its rel­a­tives such as ​“dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion,” or the lat­est phrase brought into our vocab­u­lary by SAP, ​“intel­li­gent enter­prise.” Cloud tech­nol­o­gy is about as hot as it gets right now.

We’ve Had Our Heads in the Cloud

ASUG Research has done sev­er­al stud­ies over the past 12 months on issues relat­ed to the cloud, work­ing with spon­sors like Google, Microsoft, and Freuden­berg IT. The ASUG com­mu­ni­ty has helped us unearth quite a few insights, which we’d like to share with you. This infor­ma­tion may val­i­date the deci­sions you’ve already made about the cloud or helps you make more-edu­cat­ed deci­sions about your cloud use.

Here are 10 facts about cloud tech­nol­o­gy, as shared by SAP users.

Fact 1: Con­fi­dence in cloud providers is sol­id, but it could be even bet­ter. Six in 10 study par­tic­i­pants are at least very con­fi­dent in their providers, but anoth­er third are only some­what con­fi­dent. Executives/​C‑level par­tic­i­pants are more opti­mistic about these providers than those at the man­age­r­i­al level.

Fact 2: The hybrid cloud is already the new nor­mal. Among the ASUG mem­bers we sur­veyed, 53 per­cent are using both pri­vate and pub­lic cloud tech­nol­o­gy. This num­ber gets even high­er among the vet­er­ans in the cloud (those who have more than three years of cloud experience).

Fact 3: The pub­lic and pri­vate cloud are used for dif­fer­ent work­loads. Work­loads based on a soft­ware as a ser­vice (SaaS) approach (for exam­ple, trav­el and expens­es, HR/​payroll, or CRM) are twice as like­ly to be deployed on a pub­lic cloud. Finance and core ERP work­loads, if they are on the cloud at all, are migrat­ed to a pri­vate cloud 75 to 80 per­cent of the time.

Fact 4: The data warehouse/​analytics work­load is vital to migrat­ing the ERP and finance sys­tems to the cloud. Near­ly 70 per­cent of those with finance and/​or ERP sys­tems on the cloud have already deployed their data ware­house there as well. This is not sur­pris­ing, giv­en that these two sys­tems house large vol­umes of data that would ben­e­fit from real-time analytics.

Fact 5: Com­pa­nies are invest­ing $100,000-$500,000 in cloud ser­vices annu­al­ly. Those with more expe­ri­ence in the cloud are spend­ing more than this, like­ly because they have more work­loads deployed in the cloud. Still, this is a good ball­park to deter­mine if you’re pay­ing too much for your cloud services.

Fact 6: The aver­age com­pa­ny has already deployed two to five work­loads in the cloud. The aver­age com­pa­ny is also expect­ing to move an addi­tion­al one to two work­loads with­in the next 12 months, sug­gest­ing that con­fi­dence in the cloud is con­tin­u­ing to grow.

Fact 7: Secu­ri­ty and cost are the two fac­tors with the great­est impact on sat­is­fac­tion with cloud ser­vices. Those who are more sat­is­fied with their cur­rent cloud providers are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to see secu­ri­ty and cost as a ben­e­fit. Those less sat­is­fied with their cloud ser­vice often see these two areas as chal­lenges or threats to their business.

Fact 8: One of the biggest chal­lenges for cloud users cur­rent­ly is the lack of inte­gra­tion sup­port avail­able. Aside from the vari­a­tions in rules and prac­tices across cloud providers, this is the sin­gle-biggest issue many cloud cus­tomers are fac­ing. SaaS-based work­loads may be easy to imple­ment, yet inte­grat­ing these is prov­ing to be a far big­ger chal­lenge than many cus­tomers expect. And the mar­ket needs more inte­gra­tion part­ners in this space to keep up with the demand.

Fact 9: Free­dom is a key moti­va­tor and dri­ver of sat­is­fac­tion when it comes to cloud secu­ri­ty. Options such as bring your own key (BYOK) for encryp­tion or being able to test the cloud envi­ron­ment when sig­nif­i­cant changes are made to secu­ri­ty are high­ly cor­re­lat­ed with sat­is­fac­tion for cloud cus­tomers. With BYOK, cus­tomers with data on the cloud can man­age and con­trol their own encryp­tion key.

Fact 10: The Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR) is still a sig­nif­i­cant issue for those who have data in the cloud. Near­ly all ASUG mem­bers we sur­veyed believe that the data they are run­ning or stor­ing on the cloud will be affect­ed by the Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR). As of ear­ly May, how­ev­er, less than half of ASUG mem­bers we talked with had ini­tia­tives they were deploy­ing to address these new require­ments on time for the May 2018 imple­men­ta­tion. It’s clear that cus­tomers need to be more aware of how this sweep­ing reg­u­la­tion will affect how they’re man­ag­ing data.

What’s the Fore­cast for You?

There is still plen­ty to learn about the cloud, but hope­ful­ly these tips can help your com­pa­ny solid­i­fy its road map for its cloud jour­ney. We have more cloud research in store, which we’ll glad­ly share with the SAP com­mu­ni­ty. We know that learn­ing from your peers can help you see your own future more clearly.

Inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about SAP in the cloud? Watch our cloud web­casts on demand.