Leveraging cloud can yield financial gains of $414 bn: Infosys Cloud Radar

IT services major Infosys unveiled the Infosys Cloud Radar 2021 research which links enterprise cloud usage and business growth. The independent study shows that enterprises in the six regions surveyed can add up to $414 billion in net new profits annually, through effective cloud adoption.

The Cloud Radar 2021 survey was conducted by the Infosys Knowledge Institute (IKI), a research arm of Infosys, with over 2,500 respondents from companies across the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. It covered a range of business performance goals related to cloud and found specific links to competencies such as speed to market and capabilities.

A strong profit link was identified when using cloud to rapidly bring new solutions and services to market. These investments provide a foundation to leverage AI & automation and build cloud based new sources of revenue.

Ravi Kumar S, President, Infosys said, “Effectively leveraging cloud is a transformational pillar in digital journeys. Where early cloud was a tool for allowing companies to rapidly scale, modern cloud allows companies to rapidly innovate. Today’s cloud creates a network effect across processes, data, content, experience and more. This network effect keeps enterprises relevant in a rapidly changing new digital age. The findings from the Infosys Cloud Radar 2021 comprehensively show that growth and profitability can be correlated to superior enterprise cloud adoption and orchestration.”

The research found specific links between business profit growth and the use of cloud to rapidly develop and launch new solutions and bring new functionality to market. Cloud’s ability to generate new value from data and discover new revenue sources also links to profit growth.

Superior Cloud performance requires high levels of adoption and orchestration. Cloud-fueled profit boosts can be attained by companies in any region or industry. However, they only kick in when businesses have at least 60 per cent of their systems in the cloud. To benefit from AI on cloud, the bar is even higher. Businesses must have at least 80 per cent of their business functions – such as cross domain business applications – in the cloud for AI to boost profit growth.

Despite acceleration in cloud adoption, only a fraction of large companies reached the highest level of performance and adoption. The Cloud Radar study found that nearly 1 out of 6 companies achieved exceptional cloud performance. In cloud adoption terms, fewer than one in five have crossed the 60 per cent threshold to reap the profit benefits. By 2022, more than 40 per cent of enterprises surveyed plan to shift over 60 per cent of systems into the cloud, from 17 per cent today.

Companies delivering exceptional performance in the cloud show a strong motivation to use cloud for business growth, namely, increasing speed to market, adding capabilities, and increasing scale. These exceptional performers also demonstrated greater confidence in terms of cloud spending and were more likely to engage with three or more cloud service providers, giving them the capability to place workloads optimally. They also more frequently utilise a hybrid multi-cloud arrangement – combining the best features of private and public cloud.