Majority of enterprises or 84% across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) consider cloud computing to be a priority and 56% consider it a critical priority over the next 18 months, according to a latest study by VMware.
Nearly 31% of IT budgets in EMEA region are spent on cloud computing, up from 26% in 2010, as organisations look to empower a more agile, productive and connected enterprise.
The findings from its Global Cloud Adoption Study of IT leaders revealed respondents plan to spend almost one-third of their annual enterprise IT budget on cloud computing over the next 18 months.
Most of the work occurs in private clouds at 54%, followed by 24% in public and 22% in hybrid clouds where enterprises leverage both private and public cloud environments.
VMware EMEA chief cloud technologist Joe Baguley said the company is seeing a significant shift in the way enterprises think about their IT infrastructures – and cloud is at the absolute heart of that.
"With increased adoption comes greater scrutiny and a need for tighter management – particularly when we see hybrid clouds emerging as a major model," added Joe.
"Today’s enterprise faces a different set of challenges. The need to bring together people, processes and technology in order to address misperceptions of the role of IT within the business will be imperative in delivering the required results and creating value for the business."
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Virtualization continues to be considered as a major technology for IT decision makers across EMEA, and about 81% of the respondents have deployed cloud computing on a department or enterprise-wide basis.
Despite global perceptions that cloud computing represents a more agile, flexible approach to IT, EMEA organisations still lag behind the worldwide average of deployment of cloud management adoption by at least 10% in each case, where in service-level management, it is observed at 42% in EMEA and 51% worldwide.
Respondents, however, still mentioned control of data and security as concerns with 52% of EMEA organisations saying security is their number one barrier to cloud adoption.
