According to global analyst firm, Gartner, global spending on IT services in 2020 will reach USD 3.9 trillion, an increase of 3.4% on the previous year. The EMEA region will account for almost USD 800 billion, an increase of 3.4% on the previous year and the first growth after three consecutive years of stagnation. One of the key drivers of increased spending will be in cloud services. Paweł Borowski, ITMAGINATION Board Member and Director of Outsourcing Services, explains what’s driving this increase and the growing importance of cloud to the successful realization of digital transformation strategies.
As we know, cloud enables companies to scale more quickly and easily, and so affords a level of agility that would not be possible (or would be much more difficult) with conventional ‘on premise’ IT.
The expected increase in spending for 2020, according to Gartner, is 3.4%, and this is expected to increase to 3.8% for 2021. This indicates that companies and economies around the world are focusing on digitalization. This is no surprise. As consumers, we continue to expect slicker and more sophisticated digital experiences from the retailers and service providers we shop with. If a company can’t serve up what we need on our smartphone and in a way that allows us to buy or consume with minimum friction, it’s normally easy enough for us to move on and find a company that can. And those same high expectations are now increasingly projected towards the public sector. We want to be able to renew our driver’s licenses and ID cards quickly and easily online. And we want for the process of filing our taxes to be as simple as filling out an online form. Of course, we want all of this while still being able to scrutinize what the service provider is doing with our data, and heaven forbid that somebody finds a flaw in their cyber security. Digitalization creates new opportunities and challenges for businesses.
Meeting customer (and employee) expectations requires not just investment in technology. In many cases, it requires transformation. Cloud is at the heart of that digital transformation.
Cloud is enabling organizations to operate more effectively, to reduce their costs and to keep data more secure. Globally, investment in cloud technology is expected to increase by 17% in 2020. According to Gartner, by 2022, 60% of companies will be using cloud services provided by an external supplier – that’s twice as much as in 2018. The United States leads the way in investment in cloud technology, accounting for more than half of expenditure on cloud services. Looking to the future, and specifically the EMEA region, Gartner’s research reveals that countries like Poland, the UK, Canada and the Netherlands are where the increase in spending on cloud will be greatest. From ITMAGINATION’s perspective, this is a good sign for companies in those countries, as increased development and deployment of cloud adoption strategies provides a greater chance of becoming global leaders in their market segments.
ITMAGINATION believes that any company aspiring to lead in its segment needs to be building its technology strategy around cloud-based services. At an operational level, there are obvious benefits, such as operational efficiency, cost reduction and security. However, where cloud really empowers companies to become leaders is in the way it accelerates the process of getting to products to market (Time To Market or TTM), to scale up and down in line with market conditions, and to take advantage of opportunities as and when they emerge. Having ideas for great products and services is one thing. But it’s how quickly you can get them in front of your customers, and how quickly you can scale up to meet their needs that often makes the difference. Cloud has the power to make that difference for companies.
Having worked with companies of all shapes and sizes from the United States, Russia, Asia, Australia and Europe on their cloud strategies, we have an intimate knowledge of the trends, drivers and benefits that are causing an increased uptake of cloud services.
This knowledge and geographically broad experience confirms ITMAGINATION’s belief that cloud will be the core driver of increased spending on IT in the coming years. In fact, we feel that the expected increases in spending predicted by Gartner could easily be surpassed.
Naturally, the rising importance of cloud brings with it other important considerations, such as ensuring that you have the right people and the right skills to enable greater adoption of cloud. Inevitably, as the appetite for cloud increases, so too will demand for the time of cloud-skilled professionals.
From data migration, through to the development of multi-cloud strategies and development of custom software on the cloud, ITMAGINATION is supporting companies from all around the world in their transformation journeys. As an official partner of leading technology companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, ITMAGINATION is strongly positioned to both advise on, and implement cloud-based projects. Recently, we’re experiencing a lot of demand for data migration and data management on platforms such as Azure, Google Cloud Platform and AWS. To reflect this, we’re increasing our investment in developing the skills of our team by supporting the certification goals of more than 100 engineers, administrators and developers.
So, whether you’re just setting out on your transformation journey, looking to accelerate, or you simply need to augment your teams with cloud-skilled professionals along the way, ITMAGINATION can help. Talk to us to learn more.
To find out more details about the report that this blog post is based on, check out this Gartner press release.
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