European businesses are wasting £8.8 million every year on unused cloud services, according to research.
The findings also suggested that a large number of businesses feel IT is being set up to fail as it handles both transformation projects and legacy tech.
The research was conducted by research firm Coleman Parkes, on behalf of the Insight Intelligent Technology Index (ITI) and featured 1,000 IT decision-makers at companies with 500 employees or more.
In Europe, organisations are spending £29.48 million on cloud computing, but the survey suggests 30% of that is being wasted.
“Under-utilised technology has been a problem for decades, so it’s not surprising to see the problem spread to the cloud,” said Wolfgang Ebermann, president of Insight EMEA. “However, by putting the right controls in place, organisations can optimise cloud consumption and ensure they only pay for services they are using.”
The research highlighted that investment in digital innovation is increasing. Enterprises invested an average of £32.23 million on digital innovation in the last 24 months, and plan to invest £42.12 million in the next two years.
However, 66% of respondents said they feel that IT is being set up to fail as it takes on more responsibility for transformational projects, while still keeping core systems running effectively – which is an increase from the 57% that thought so in 2018.
According to the report, unless there is a change in corporate culture and responsibility for digital innovation is truly shared across the business, this trend is likely to increase.
Boardroom demands to deliver digital projects has placed a lot of pressure on IT teams, particularly to keep costs and security under control. When asked to choose their top three challenges around digital innovation, 46% of respondents chose monthly costs, such as operational expenditure, 44% selecting upfront costs like capital expenditure and 38% pointed to insufficient budgets. Similarly, 60% said security is the main factor that keeps them up at night with 68% saying it’s the biggest challenge in globally managing IT operations.
“The strategic importance of IT as a key enabler for future business success is clearly becoming more understood at board level,” continued Wolfgang Ebermann.
“The role of the CIO is clearly evolving from managing IT to business partner. They have become the ‘digital transformation change agent’ and a core member of the executive board. Yet the CIO and IT cannot solely be held responsible for digital innovation; the entire business has a role to play.”