Mobility found to drive cloud adoption among U.S. companies

The results of the latest CSC Cloud Usage Index from the Computer Sciences Corporation may surprise some cloud proponents who believe that cost reduction is the technology's biggest draw. According to the report, needs associated with enterprise mobility may actually be the biggest factor driving companies to adopt hosted apps and services.

Since the cloud rose to prominence during the past several years, the technology's perceived ability to reduce costs has been among its most talked-about benefits. Through shared services and pay-as-you-go pricing models, companies have been able to invest less in IT infrastructure without hampering their access to important functionality.

But as the technology, as well as organizational needs, have matured, it appears that companies' desires have also changed. Specifically, the CSC study found that more organizations are now using the cloud as a tool for mobile device management.

Driven mainly by consumerization, companies today are in need of a centralized platform from which employees using a wide variety of devices can access and leverage enterprise data and apps. It appears the cloud is that platform.

According to CSC's report, a poll of more than 3,500 global IT decision-makers revealed that 33 percent said connecting employees through a multitude of computing devices was their top reason for migrating to the cloud. By comparison, 21 percent cited the speed of business and 17 percent pointed out cost-saving benefits.

"Overturning conventional wisdom, one-third of respondents cite their need to better connect employees who use a multitude of computing devices as the number one reason they adopt cloud," the report stated.

The need for the cloud to support mobility was especially prevalent among small- and medium-sized businesses in the United States, the study found. Among this segment, 46 percent of respondents highlighted information access as a top driver for cloud adoption, while just 10 percent said cost reductions.

Numerous recent reports have pointed out the relationship between mobility and the cloud, as well as how the two technologies figure to intersect some time in the near future. An ABI Research report released in September predicted that 41 percent of enterprise communications users will be migrated to the cloud eventually. The shift, the report concluded, will be driven by "enterprise mobilization."