IT Execs Say Cost Savings Make Cloud-Based Analytics ‘Inevitable’

Organizations are steadily migrating their analytics functions to the cloud – with two-thirds of these functions expected to make this transition by 2020, according to a recent survey from Teradata. The resulting report, titled “The State of Analytics in the Cloud,” indicates that the vast majority of companies view the migration as “inevitable” —with businesses saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as a result. They also expect to see faster deployments and better analytics performance with their public cloud investment. About 700 global senior IT decision-makers took part in the research, which was conducted by market research company Vanson Bourne. This slideshow features selected findings from the survey, with charts provided courtesy of Teradata.

On average, 47 percent of overall analytics functions are currently in the cloud. By 2020, 67 percent of these functions should exist in the cloud.

Nearly four of five survey respondents believe that moving data and analytics to the cloud is inevitable for their organization. In addition, 83 percent feel that the public cloud is the best place to run analytics.

Four of five respondents said they’d prefer that their company’s analytics functions would move to the cloud faster than they are now. Seven of ten said analytics is moving to the public cloud more slowly than other business apps and workloads.

More than one-half of respondents said they expect faster deployments by moving analytics infrastructure to the public cloud. Other perceived benefits include improved security (as cited by 46 percent of respondents), faster insights into data (44 percent) and better performance (44 percent).

Four of five respondents said their company would save at least $100,000 annually by migrating analytics to the cloud– and 42 percent anticipate saving more than $500,000. The average expected savings is $480,066.

When asked to name the top public cloud providers offering infrastructure for analytics, 56 percent of survey respondents picked Microsoft Azure. Amazon Web Services (AWS) ranked second, as cited by 47 percent of survey respondents.

Among organizations currently adopting analytics, 47 percent either currently or plan to deploy data visualization in the public cloud. About two of five currently or plan to deploy business intelligence, descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics and data mining in the public cloud.

Among companies currently adopting analytics, 48 percent either currently or plan to use the public cloud for sales analytics. Other leading analytics uses include logistics/supply chain (as cited by 46 percent of respondents), IT (45 percent) and marketing (44 percent).

One-half of respondents listed security issues as a major barrier in moving analytics to the cloud. Other barriers include regulation (as cited by 35 percent of respondents), a lack of trust (32 percent) and difficulties with connecting legacy systems with cloud apps (30 percent).

When asked why their company may want to use an external vendor to run their analytics in the cloud, 54 percent of respondents said “improved security.” Service customization ranked second as a reason, as cited by 42 percent of respondents.