Business leaders, rather than IT decision-makers, are spearheading cloud migrations.
C-levels with knowledge of the cloud drove 32 percent of transformations, and the board of directors and C-levels without knowledge of the cloud drove 18 and 11 percent respectively, according to Rackspace’s ‘The Anatomy of the Cloud Migration’ survey.
By comparison, just 22 percent were driven by IT development departments and 14 percent by IT operations departments.
This means that business leaders, as opposed to IT departments, now drive 61 percent of cloud migrations.
Despite the push from the boardroom, only 33 percent of the IT decision-makers surveyed said they have good experience in the cloud or are highly experienced in operating a cloud-based infrastructure.
The shift is reflected in the objectives driving cloud adoption, showing a blurring between technical and business goals.
While the overall most cited motivation was to reduce IT costs at 61 percent, increasing resiliency and disaster recovery was second at 50 percent and improving security was third at 36 percent.
Just 16 percent of the respondents were concerned about justifying the cloud in business terms, suggesting that the battle has largely been won over its value.
"Some companies are more or less sleepwalking into the cloud as consumption of cloud is rapidly occurring amongst users," said Nick McQuire, Vice President of Enterprise at CCS Insight.
But he adds that "companies are getting more familiar with cloud implementation strategies and taking their own route to the cloud.
McQuire suggests that the shift of control over cloud from IT to the C-suite and boardroom will continue: "The role of IT in the cloud is more curatorial rather than the old style of IT building infrastructure and then centrally distributing it.
"IT’s job will become much more management and governance-oriented, as well as advisory.
The report surveyed 250 IT decision-makers and 250 business leaders.
