Free 13-Page Report: Business and IT Challenges in the Cloud

Looking to cater to the modern workforce and increase employee productivity, organizations are making the mad dash to the cloud – and the Microsoft Cloud, in particular. But an Office 365 migration is only half the battle for today’s IT leaders. As many IT departments know all too well, once implementation is complete, the ongoing challenge of effectively managing and securing their cloud investment begins.

To gauge organizations’ core challenges when migrating, managing, and protecting cloud-based productivity solutions, AvePoint surveyed more than 150 IT pros in a new study released today. Here are some of the report’s key findings:

1. Organizations are willing to invest both time and resources into successful migrations. 

We found that three-quarters of respondents have already made the leap to cloud-based productivity and collaboration applications. Roughly half of organizations that migrated took three to six months and most (65 percent) spent more than $50,000 to do so, shedding light on how intricate and expensive the migration process can be. For large enterprises with troves of data, migration can take up to six months or longer. Of organizations that have completed migration, almost half (49 percent) contracted a third party to support the process.

2. Though most organizations prefer Microsoft, many are vendor-agnostic.

Of those organizations that have moved their collaboration and productivity applications to the cloud, nearly half (45 percent) carried out an Office 365 migration. However, most organizations rely on a blend of vendors rather than locking employees into one. For instance, although only 13 percent of IT professionals count Google for Work as their organization’s primary application, 39 percent say Google Apps are among the variety of programs employees use to get their jobs done. Similarly, only 21 percent cite Dropbox as their core productivity app, but twice as many (42 percent) say it is still used actively by staff.

3. Managing cloud applications is the true cost driver.

Our survey found three-fourths of IT professionals say the main cost associated with managing cloud platforms is their IT departments’ time. And 62 percent report the day-to-day upkeep costs of cloud applications account for up to a quarter of corporate IT budgets. Since the high cost of managing cloud applications isn’t sustainable long-term, most (55 percent) of the organizations partner with third-party software and service providers to help manage their core productivity and collaboration solutions. Outsourcing cloud application management can free up organizations’ IT departments and their budgets to focus on more strategic initiatives.

4. Cloud security remains IT professionals’ Achilles’ heel.

The sentiment persists – 53 percent of IT professionals cite security as their organization’s top challenge when contemplating cloud-based productivity and collaboration solutions. In fact, less than half (45 percent) of respondents say they’re very confident that the data in their core cloud-based productivity and collaboration apps is secure; 52 percent are “somewhat” confident. With these concerns in mind, organizations that engage a third-party for migrating, managing, or protecting their core cloud-based productivity and collaboration platform are more likely to feel the data in those platforms is secure.

With more cloud options than ever before, organizations aren’t just looking for secure, reliable collaboration and productivity applications – they’re looking for the tools that will enable their employees to work better, faster. But migration isn’t the end of the road.

Download the Full Report

AvePoint’s study, Migrate, Manage, Protect – Organizations’ Journey to Productivity & Collaboration in the Cloud, offers information for IT managers looking to migrate and tips for managing cloud solutions. To learn more, download the full, 13-page report.