UKCloud’s state of cloud adoption survey

Key Takeaways

A significant majority of IT professionals in the UK public sector express a desire to transition to cloud solutions, with 87% indicating they would do so if a perfect solution existed.

Concerns over commercial risks like vendor lock-in and reliance on a single provider are major barriers to cloud adoption, with 78% of respondents highlighting these fears; 85% prefer a multi-cloud strategy to mitigate risks.

Security and operational risks, alongside affordability concerns, notably hinder cloud adoption, with 85% citing risk aversion and 85% identifying cost as the primary impediment.

UKCloud has announced the results of a survey of more than 300 senior IT professionals and business leaders in the UK public sector that reveals the key challenges and issues that are affecting cloud adoption. 

The results of the survey confirm a desire to shift from traditional IT environments to cloud solutions with 87 percent of those surveyed stating they would do this if a ‘perfect solution’ existed. These results were reflected at all levels with 82 percent of respondents agreeing that the senior leadership in their organisation ‘understands and values progressive technology.’ 

One of the key findings of the survey was the extent of concern of the commercial risks of cloud adoption. 78 percent of respondents expressed a fear of vendor lock-in with a similar number agreeing that the risk of ‘over reliance on a sole provider’ is inhibiting their cloud adoption. More than 85 percent agreed they would prefer multi-cloud which UKCloud suggests as being a means to mitigate these commercial risks.  

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Another aspect of risk identified by the survey is related to security and operational risks to live systems. 85 percent of those surveyed believe their organisation is reluctant to move workloads to the cloud due to risk and security concerns.  

Affordability also plays a role with 85 percent of respondents agreeing cost is the biggest impediment to cloud adoption and 80 percent saying that ‘fear of runaway costs’ is a notable hindrance.  

Finally, 78 percent of respondents confirmed they lacked the skills and resources, such as DevOps and automation, to build and operate cloud-native applications.