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More than half of IT managers surveyed by West IP Communications say they expect to get full return on investment by moving to the cloud – but it’s an unconvincing figure.

54% of the more than 300 respondents said they would be able to fully recoup their costs of cloud computing adoption, which of course means 46% aren’t so sure. Yet those with bigger IT budgets were more confident: two thirds (66%) of managers with company IT budgets over $5m were “confident” the savings of cloud computing would cover the operating costs.

Of those who were expecting ROI, three quarters (74%) expected it to be through reduced costs of doing business, including maintenance costs and the size of the IT staff. 31% of respondents said they would recoup their costs in two years, and 21% said it would only take one year.

There were other interesting titbits from the research:

• 75% said that when moving telecommunications to the cloud, quality of service would either stay the same or improve
• 40% said their organisation has plans to move voice/telephony communications to the cloud
• 55% of those polled said they didn’t believe communication services providers offer requisite security checks alongside their cloud telecommunication offerings. Because of these security concerns, more than half (55%) said they would implement a private cloud solution. Another third (32%) said they would utilise a hybrid approach

A post on the West IP Communications blog concludes: “Overall, while hosting systems in the cloud has grown in popularity over the past few years, more IT managers should talk to their service providers to discuss important factors like cost and security.

“The fact is that pushing essential unified communications tools to the cloud can provide companies with a cost-effective, secure method of improving efficiencies within the IT department and the broader organisation,” it adds.

You can read more here.