Over three quarters of European companies have moved email to the cloud

MARCH 10, 2011 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today reveals that  77% of European organisations have piloted or used cloud email, making it the most popular cloud-based application to deploy, according to a study of 250 enterprises.

The research, conducted across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, also highlighted that 65% of IT decision makers now believe the cloud is a credible option for their business, though attitudes vary greatly with Germany (62%) being the most active cloud service adopter, compared to 36% in the UK.

“Cloud is finally beginning to deliver on the hype,” said Owen Cole, Technical Director, F5 Networks.  “Although many organisations have been sceptical about the benefits of the cloud and its reliability to deliver, it is clear that investment is taking place, and now organisations need to maintain control of applications and data in the cloud to gain more substantial returns.”

Across Europe, cloud adoption is significant. 77% of companies are either testing or using cloud storage, while 56% are utilising the cloud to deliver company-specific applications. Other key findings from the research include:

Management Headaches
French IT decision makers are more concerned about application management issues (68%) than their counterparts in the UK (50%) and Spain (42%), highlighting a clear need to enable greater ownership and control of cloud services.

Cloud Confusion
72% UK IT decision makers believe cloud computing is confusing to get to grips with, compared to 66% in France and 62% in Spain, unsurprising when the complexities of how cloud services can be hosted and delivered are considered.

“To ensure they accrue all the expected cost and flexibility benefits associated with cloud computing, organisations need visibility and solid Service Level Agreements with providers to have the confidence to fully adopt and integrate cloud services.” concludes Cole. “Moving forward, it will be important to offer the strategic control points necessary to allow customers the level of context awareness and understanding that will help build this trust.”

Additional findings from the research include:

- 70% agree “cloud services are becoming more important to my organisation as solutions to practical problems”
- 68% say “our use of cloud services will increase in the next 12 months”
- 68% agree that “having applications hosted by a third party presents new management challenges”
- 72% agree that there is “an increasing array of options for the way our organisation manages IT delivery”
- 77% would prefer to maintain full in-house control of cloud services
- 64%  say the “cost benefits of cloud can be reduced by poor management”