Survey: Cloud brings unexpected benefits to users

The results of a survey from Tata Communications suggest that there are more benefits to using cloud services than the ones enterprises may be expecting. While there has been a significant amount of "hype" surrounding what cloud solutions can do, the source seeks to prove whether or not the cloud has met the high expectations. For most of the respondents, it certainly seems to.

In a press release, Tata outlined the major findings of this survey, which included 1,000 different subjects from eight countries around the world and industries as diverse as IT, healthcare, manufacturing and energy. Out of the entire sample, 85 percent believed that the cloud did in fact "live up to the hype." Private cloud use also seems to be a major desire, with respondents on average predicting that more than half of their IT would be based in a private cloud nine years from now.

Other benefits uncovered by the survey include faster technology access and better levels of productivity. More than 80 percent of respondents said that they saw unexpected benefits, too, like lower costs. Commenting on these findings for Forbes, Joe McKendrick mentioned other possible related advantages to the cloud as well.

"These include the ability to duplicate or adopt successful business processes others have hashed out; smoother mergers and acquisitions; and even providing the enterprise a way to segue into the cloud business itself (even if it is a non-tech company)," he said. "It would be interesting to see a survey that explores these types of unexpected advantages as well."

It's possible that there are many cloud benefits that will only be fully noticed as more enterprises adopt. User businesses should start working with a mainframe modernization system to explore some of these for themselves.