There’s no question any more about cloud growth. The many advantages that come with cloud have made it a preferred option for storing and accessing applications, and companies world over have begun to embrace it in a big way.

The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2017 that was released on Wednesday shows the magnitude of cloud growth. It reports that 95% of IT professionals surveyed have said that their organization has migrated critical applications and data to the cloud.

This is significant in many ways. Firstly, it gives us an insight into the depth of cloud market. Though most of us knew that companies were adopting cloud in a big way, it’s still a surprise to see that 95% have some kind of critical application in it. This number signifies the growing trust that companies have in the cloud now.

Secondly, it shows how far cloud security has come over the last few years. Many reports released a few years ago show the reluctance of companies to migrate their critical applications to the cloud because of security concerns. Though these concerns are not fully gone, the fact that companies are considering a hybrid model to overcome these insecurities is heartening. This way they can leverage the power of cloud and at the same time, protect their assets.

That said, there is more room for cloud growth based on the statistics presented in this report. It states that IT budgets are not moving towards cloud technologies, as 69% of respondents said that companies spend less than 40% of their annual IT budget on cloud technologies. Another 45% of respondents said that their respective organizations are spending around 70% of their budget on traditional and on-premise applications.

These numbers mean that there is room for cloud growth, and also that hybrid infrastructure is emerging as the preferred model of operations, as businesses prefer to use both cloud platforms and on-premise datacenters to store their data and applications. The choice of moving to the cloud is believed to be based on factors such as the priority of applications, perceptions about cloud security and ROI

The report further states that 74% of respondents said that their organization had moved applications to the cloud, 50% had said that they moved storage and 35% said they moved databases. The decision to choose these migrations was based on return on investment (ROI). In fact, ROI is seen as the driving factor for deciding what and when should be migrated to the cloud.

What does this report mean to customers and client industry at large? First off, it’s a ton of positive news that can entice more customers to move their operations to the cloud. Another aspect that it reflects is the changing role of IT professionals within the industry. With such a rapid rate of cloud growth, there is going to be a greater focus on management and integration than pure development. It’ll be interesting to see how IT professionals take to this change.

Lastly, it shows the vast opportunities that continue to exist for cloud-based companies.

In all, there’s much to cheer from this report.

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