Digital driving nearly half of revenue for companies

Emerging technologies such as AI, the IoT and machine learning have changed the way businesses operate and what it takes to thrive in a digital economy, a new report finds.

An independent survey of IT leaders in more than 9,000 businesses spanning twenty-four countries across APC, EMEA and the US, conducted by Pure Storage, found that digital solutions drive around half of revenue (47% on average) for organizations, whether through customer facing applications or more back-office functionality.

But despite this growth, technical complexity and strategic uncertainty from an infrastructure standpoint have prevented businesses from truly becoming digital. Public, private and hybrid cloud, SaaS and traditional on-premises all have momentum, but businesses still lack confidence in where to place specific workloads.

On average, businesses are running 41% of applications with traditional on-premises IT – higher than both public cloud (26%) and private cloud (24%).

Public cloud is poised to grow in the next 18-24 months (61% say their use will increase). Alongside this, a combined 87% of respondents see their use of either private cloud (52%) or traditional on-premises (35%) accelerating.

Despite strong indications of public cloud growth, a significant number of companies that ran workloads in public cloud environments have actually moved some or all of those workloads back on-premises (43% of businesses in North America have done so). In EMEA, 65% say they have reduced use of public cloud in the last 12 months because of security concerns.

Businesses run approximately one in five applications via SaaS currently (22%), and more than half (51%) see their use of SaaS increasing over the next 18-24 months.

“Emerging technologies have started to drive true digital transformation, but businesses remain in a cycle of lure and regret when it comes to public cloud,” said Scott Dietzen, CEO of Pure Storage.

“Rather than being viewed as competing options, companies should embrace cloud and on-premises storage as complementary offerings. By doing so, storage infrastructure becomes agile and future-proof, which drives the data advantage that enterprises seek.”