cloud: Cloud strategy driving business innovation, says HCLtech report

Businesses are looking to ramp up investments in cloud technology in the coming year amid greater interest in generative artificial intelligence (genAI), an HCLTech survey of senior executives found.

The survey report said that of businesses that have already deployed genAI, 34% planned to increase usage over the next 12 months. Of those that do not currently deploy genAI, 24% plan to do so in the coming year. Further, 85% of the senior executives surveyed recognised the importance of cloud in enabling genAI.

“A cloud gives you that fabric of data which can exist anywhere within the enterprise, on which you enable AI capabilities,” Kalyan Kumar, global chief technology officer and head – ecosystems, HCLTech, told ET.

The survey also indicated the importance of cloud in enabling businesses to switch strategies at speed. Most leaders have had to pivot their business strategies at least twice in the past three years, the report said. Around 87% said they would not have been able to make significant pivots in the past year without cloud.

“Spend is increasing,” said Alan Flower, executive vice president, ecosystem, HCLTech. “Adoption of a cloud native posture puts clients in a perfect position to now accelerate their adoption of AI,” he added.

Further, the survey found that 91% of businesses relied on the cloud to meet their sustainability goals and 87% to manage pandemic-related staffing and supply chain issues.

“A cloud native posture is inherently more sustainable and efficient,” Flower said, adding that it enables businesses to design and build more efficient and elastic applications more quickly than before.“Clients now uniformly view the cloud as a platform for innovation and agility going forward,” Flower said.

Obstacles to leveraging cloud remain, however. Of the respondents, 70% said the shortage of skilled personnel affected their ability to use the cloud effectively, while 41% identified data security as a concern.

Further, 32% of senior executives said that a lack of alignment and collaboration between business and technology departments stood in the way of achieving business goals.

The survey covered 500 senior executives, with participants from 17 sectors across the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and sought to capture both IT and business perspectives.

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