Can Cloud Deliver Cost Savings Alongside Business Agility?

Transcription

1 A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By Rackspace September 2015 Can Cloud Deliver Cost Savings Alongside Business Agility?

2 Table Of Contents Executive Summary... 1 Business Priorities Focus On Improving Operational Efficiency And Competitiveness... 2 Beyond Operational Efficiency Toward Business Agility... 4 Benefits Of Cloud Enable Business Agility... 5 Organizations Must Seek Partners In Order To Realize The Benefits Of Cloud... 8 Key Recommendations Appendix A: Methodology Appendix B: Demographics Appendix C: Endnotes ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING Forrester Consulting provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders succeed in their organizations. Ranging in scope from a short strategy session to custom projects, Forrester s Consulting services connect you directly with research analysts who apply expert insight to your specific business challenges. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting. 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. For additional information, go to 1-SNJD6F

3 1 Executive Summary Today s customers are highly demanding. Empowered with multiple means of digitally engaging with their entire ecosystems, they expect to find information and purchase products at any time and from any location. But there is a problem. To be cost-effective and responsive to customer needs requires business agility. In turn, this requires a change in how IT manages its service portfolio, the supporting infrastructure, and the requirements of its partners. Forrester defines business agility as the transition to a digital business that allows an enterprise to embrace market, organizational, and operational changes as a matter of routine. Businesses are expanding their investment in cloud-based services to drive agility. Cloud is powering the rapid creation of new customer-facing services, software, and digitized processes that allow organizations to deliver on customers demands by removing the heavy lifting and upfront investment needed with traditional infrastructure. In July 2015, Rackspace commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how IT needs are changing to enable business agility in the age of the customer. We conducted an in-depth survey with 180 business and IT decisionmakers responsible for business-critical applications and their organization s IT strategy across Germany, the UK, and the US. To further explore this trend, Forrester developed a hypothesis that tested the assertion that the drivers for change within IT are no longer just for cost efficiency but also for business agility. The study revealed key components of business agility as market, organizational, and process agility, and how both cloud services and third-party partners are enabling efficiencies across each of these. KEY FINDINGS Forrester s study yielded four key findings: The age of the customer places huge demands on IT. Organizations must place customers at the center of their decision-making. Organizations are stepping up to the challenge by prioritizing improving operational efficiency, competitiveness, and customer experiences. Technology leaders are being asked to support the business by enabling technologies to quickly deliver high-quality experiences to serve customers. Business agility is critical. While operational efficiency is top priority, further exploring the results of the study reveals that the core aspiration of many organizations is business agility. Technology leaders need effective approaches to adapting their services including people, process, and technology to meet the demands of more dynamic and reactive business models. Use of cloud services is expanding to enable business agility. The study found that cloud adoption is growing fast. Cloud offers a number of key benefits, such as faster implementation and improved flexibility, which enables organizations to build new customer experiences, services, and products quickly. Faster release cycles allow for a more incremental approach to change, reducing risk and allowing the possibility of field testing new ideas. Having partnerships with cloud service providers helps organizations fully embrace cloud for business agility. IT and business decision-makers seek collaboration with partners to guide them through cloud adoption by addressing gaps in resources, skills, and knowledge. Organizations expect partners to have deep expertise and knowledge to support their transition to the cloud for business agility through architectural guidance, application migration support, and professional services.

4 2 Business Priorities Focus On Improving Operational Efficiency And Competitiveness We have entered the age of the customer, a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers. 1 Customers are now in the driver s seat. Customers engage with brands across multiple touchpoints throughout the buyer life cycle. They expect to get what they want, when they want, in their moment of need, and across any device. Given this context, organizations are leveraging business technologies to enable them to efficiently deliver on customer needs, while ensuring high quality and low cost. Striving for operational efficiency enables organizations to focus on delivering superior customer experiences to attract and serve customers, as well as unlock new customer value by providing seamless services across multiple channels, offering personalization of both product and pricing models, and predicting customer needs. Not surprisingly then, IT and business decision-makers are recognizing this imperative and are prioritizing the following business initiatives (see Figure 1): Improving operational efficiency. Over a third (36%) of organizations selected improving operational efficiency as one of their top three business priorities today. Reducing cost will always be a high priority for organizations, but the shift of focus to operational efficiency further highlights the need to deliver on customer needs to remain competitive. Improving competitiveness. 24% of organizations highlighted improving competitive position as one of their top three business initiatives. Business technology innovation is intensifying competition in all industries. Organizations understand they need to differentiate their products and services to stand out from new digitally savvy firms, as well as established competitors to attract and retain customers. deliver products and services, as well as a cultural shift in how the organization operates. FIGURE 1 Improving Operational Efficiency Is The Top Business Priority Please select the top three business initiatives your organization is focusing on in 2015? Improve operational efficiency Improve competitive position Improve customer experience Base: 180 business and IT decision-makers responsible for planning and/or executing their organization s cloud strategy (top five responses shown) Improve profitability Increase innovation 24% 24% 23% 23% 36% Organizations must ensure all business-tocustomer touchpoints, both physical and digital, provide an excellent customer experience. To do this, organizations are prioritizing business initiatives that focus on improving operational efficiency, their competitiveness, and their customers experience. Improving their customers experience. A further 24% of organizations also highlighted that they must improve their customer experience. Organizations need to take a systematic approach to design and delivery of customerfacing services to ensure they are synced to understand and connect with customers. This necessitates changes in existing processes used to develop, market, sell, and

5 3 PREDICTABLE AND HIGH-QUALITY APPLICATION DELIVERY IS NECESSARY While speed-to-market will always be important in the age of the customer, efficiently delivering high-quality products and services has now become the top priority. In fact, only 15% of organizations selected improving time-to-market as one of their three business priorities this year. When exploring the demands being placed on teams developing customerfacing applications, the survey revealed that business leaders expect (see Figure 2): FIGURE 2 Development Teams Are Being Asked To Deliver High-Quality Software At Speed What are the main demands being placed on teams involved in developing customer-facing applications? (Select all that apply) Improving the quality of the software we deliver 61% Improved quality of the software delivered. 61% indicated a need to improve the quality of the software. Business leaders won t compromise on substandard software in production. The cost of poor software in the age of the customer is high, as social media makes everything viral and software and systems represent your brand. This makes substandard software just too high of a business risk or cost to accept. Making software delivery dates more predictable, reliable, and transparent Improving user/customer experience with software we deliver More frequent delivery of highquality software to production 56% 54% 53% More predictable and transparent delivery dates. Development practices are changing as teams move away from large-scale projects to smaller, more regular product releases. The survey reflects this shift, with 56% of respondents highlighting that one of the main demands being placed on teams developing customer-facing applications is to make software delivery dates more predictable, reliable, and transparent. Delivering at speed with quality. As releases get smaller they become more frequent. More than half (53%) indicated that customer-facing application teams are being asked to deliver more frequent and higher-quality software. Application development teams are already responding to this demand. 48% of organizations indicated that IT can develop and produce customerfacing applications within one month. Base: 180 business and IT decision-makers responsible for planning and/or executing their organization s cloud strategy Customers expect timely and high-quality software and have little patience for poor software. They also expect updates and changes to be seamless with little or no impact. This means more frequent and predictable releases. The challenge is to combine newer and faster development techniques with highquality delivery.

6 4 Beyond Operational Efficiency Toward Business Agility The study has shown that organizations are focused on improving their operational efficiency and delivering at speed with high quality. The key to success is to ensure this becomes engrained into the organization as a standard practice across all disciplines. Organizations are well on their way to enabling business agility, with more than twothirds of IT and business decision-makers believing they are responsive or very responsive to changing business demands. The study revealed that organizations are looking to enable: Market agility. When setting their IT strategy, organizations are looking to improve their market agility. Market responsiveness requires rapid introduction of new products and services. The most important business goal when setting the organization s IT strategy is to ensure it offers additional services to existing customers or broadens its customer base with new services (see Figure 3). In addition, organizations also highlighted addressing rising customer expectations and improving customer satisfaction by improving existing products and services as key business goals for their IT strategy. Process agility. Almost three quarters (74%) identified consolidating and simplifying business operations as being important or critically important when setting their IT strategy. Every business is now becoming digital with technology at the heart of key business processes. Over time, legacy systems have grown and become more complex, making them inflexible and difficult to change. Adoption of newer software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based services can remove the barrier of enhancing and maintaining those business processes, driving greater process agility. Easier configuration and faster release and update cycles mean that changes and improvements can be implemented quickly with less risk. SaaS solutions provide standard functionality as part of the core service, with maintenance and product updates often provided automatically as part of the service. So, changing business processes essentially becomes a configuration activity rather than a complex software release. various lines of business in order to meet their organization s objectives. Employees expect a similar experience to customers when using technology. They want access to the information they need at the moment of need in context on the appropriate device. Organizational agility means the freedom of information (access when needed), the freedom of movement (work anywhere), and the ability to connect with anyone. FIGURE 3 IT Strategies Focus On Improving Business Agility On a scale of 1 to 5, how important are the following business goals when setting your organizations IT strategy? (Showing only 5 = critically important and 4 = important) Critically important (5) Important (4) Offer additional services to existing customers or broaden customer base with new services Address rising customer expectations and improve customer satisfaction Consolidating and simplifying business operations Consolidating and simplifying the company s portfolio of products and services 41% 40% 36% 36% Base: 180 business and IT decision-makers responsible for planning and/or executing their organization s cloud strategy 37% 40% 38% 42% Exploring IT strategy goals revealed that organizations are thinking beyond just operational efficiency and striving toward business agility by looking to embrace market, organizational, and process change as a matter of routine. Organizational agility. The study also explored the key initiatives that organizations must enhance to meet IT business goals. 30% of business decision makers surveyed said they must enhance collaboration between

7 5 Benefits Of Cloud Enable Business Agility Cloud spending and adoption are both on the rise. Forrester forecasts the global public cloud market will reach $191 billion by 2020, from $53 billion in Over 60% of companies surveyed for this study have already implemented or are expanding their use of cloud-based applications. The study revealed that cloud adoption is growing significantly, with 74% of respondents highlighting that they will expand or add new cloud services in the next three years. Most organizations plan to adopt hybrid cloud solutions, as 58% of business and IT decision-makers plan to use both private and public cloud. Forrester defines cloud computing as a standardized IT capability (services, software, or infrastructure) delivered via Internet standard technologies in a pay-per-use, selfservice way. Technology and business decision-makers originally moved software, infrastructure, and app development to the cloud as a cost-saving measure. However, decision-makers now see cloud, because of its nimbleness and flexibility, as a key technology to underpin business agility. Why? The top three objectives for investing in cloud focus on improving market, organizational, and process agility (see Figure 4). Cloud enables organizations to: Improve their ability to launch new products and services. Launching new products and new services enables organizations to remain competitive, especially in the age of the customer. More than a quarter of respondents indicated this as a top objective for the cloud investments. Cloud-based services increase agility by providing on-demand capabilities for infrastructure, platforms, or complete software suites. Organizations can use pre-existing (standard) capabilities to deploy faster or try new ideas without the heavy lifting associated with traditional developments. Streamline and improve process operation effectiveness. 25% of organizations surveyed identified the objective of their investment in cloud as to streamline and improve process operation effectiveness. Using cloud services makes it easier for organizations to adapt existing processes to drive greater improvements. At the same time, cloud service providers are experts at running infrastructure at scale, so they are more efficient and effective. As platforms advance, organizations also have access to technologies such as big data or advanced analytics, providing greater customer insight. Become more agile and flexible. 23% of organizations are investing in cloud to improve the organizations ability to be more agile and flexible. Organizations can concentrate on the code that is unique to them the code that provides their business value. They use different cloud solutions to support varying business needs. Virtualized applications can be moved to infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) to make better use of infrastructure resources or respond to increasing loads. Applications can be built on standard platforms via platform-as-a-service (PaaS) to simplify development and deployment. Commodity items (such as standard productivity tools) can be provided as software-as-aservice and used as standard building blocks. These services can be accessed anywhere on any device, allowing greater dissemination of knowledge and sharing with customers, employees, and partners. FIGURE 4 Key Objectives For Investment In Cloud What are the top three objectives for your investment or planned investment in cloud? (Select all that apply) Improve our ability to launch new products and services in a more timely and cost-effective manner To streamline and improve process operations effectiveness Improved ability to make the business more agile and flexible Base: 161 organizations that have already implemented or are planning to implement cloud applications (top three responses shown) 26% 25% 23%

8 6 Cloud services remove the heavy lifting associated with traditional infrastructure, allowing organizations to focus on differentiating the software they deliver to both employees and customers. This improves their ability to launch new products and services and drive process operation effectiveness and efficiency. CLOUD OFFERS FASTER IMPLEMENTATION, INCREASED FLEXIBILITY, AND LOWER COST To keep up with rapidly evolving customer and employee demands, organizations see cloud investments as a way to quickly arm employees with the tools and services to meet those demands. Organizations highlighted that they expect cloud to allow for faster implementation and deployment (82%); increased flexibility to upscale/downscale as usage changes (78%); and lower IT costs (72%) (see Figure 5). The result is that cloud enables organizations to expand their customer base, because faster and easier development of new products and services enables them to: Build on existing customer experiences. To differentiate from competitors and boost customer satisfaction, organizations must constantly improve their digital touchpoints. As cloud services provide rapid iteration cycles, they allow IT and business decisionmakers to continuously build compelling capabilities. For example, a multinational courier organization revamped its website using cloud-based location services to provide customer interactive experiences, such as live tracking of parcels and quick ways to update shipping information. Develop new experiences for customers. Cloud solutions provide building blocks that allow businesses to capitalize on new opportunities. By combining cloud services with the right analytics tools, organizations can innovate and try different approaches (for example, through A/B testing) to understand what best fits customer needs. FIGURE 5 Organizations Expect Faster Implementation As The Main Benefit Of Cloud Which of the following are the main benefits you expect from adopting cloud? (Select all that apply) Faster implementation/ deployment Increased flexibility (scale up/scale down as usage changes) Lower IT costs Improved business agility Faster delivery of new features/functions from cloud providers Base: 180 business and IT decision-makers responsible for planning and/or executing their organization s cloud strategy (top five responses shown) 55% 61% 72% Cloud service providers offer the cloud infrastructure, platform, or software environment that allows faster and more flexible deployment and implementation of services at a higher quality. This frees up IT leaders time to find new ways to deliver compelling and innovative capabilities for existing and new customer experiences throughout the buying journey. 82% 78% Address customer needs throughout the buying life cycle. Through faster implementation and deployment, organizations will be able to leverage cloud services to maximize the opportunity of every customer engagement across the entire buyer life cycle.

9 7 ORGANIZATIONS UNDERPLAY THE BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION IMPACT OF CLOUD The cost of cloud is still a major concern for all organizations. Business and IT decision-makers surveyed highlighted that their main concerns are focused on cost: per-capacity cost (63%); data storage cost (61%); functionality-based costs (53%); and per-user licensing costs (51%) (see Figure 6). Many organizations are worried about losing control with costs increasing in an unpredictable way. The broad direction of change that cloud enables touches most aspects of business and IT and creates a new challenge: people s reluctance to embrace the technology transformation efforts at the business level, the senior IT management level, and the rank and file within IT. Half (49%) of IT and business decision-makers surveyed identified cultural resistance as one of their key concerns for their cloud deployment. Cloud success depends on managing this disruption carefully to ensure that the benefits cloud brings to your company are not overshadowed by other factors beyond cost, such as unhappy employees. In fact, a CIO at a large pharmaceutical organization lost his job, despite introducing an award-winning cloud-based strategy. The company failed to internalize how disruptive the change was on roles, attitudes, and career aspirations both within IT and the business. 3 Adopting cloud is not just another IT project it s about people changes, too. Effectively integrating and using cloud services means new skills and knowledge. It means being able to work with a number of suppliers in a delivery chain (who will have their own processes and priorities). This change is disruptive, with many people within IT affected. To get cloud strategy right, organizations have to learn to move away from measuring the success of change against what IT cares about and focus on the priorities of the business. To get the full benefit of cloud, organizations must consider the impact on organization culture, governance, and existing operating and financial models. FIGURE 6 Organizations Are Concerned By Cost Of Cloud Which of the following, in your opinion, represents your greatest concern about a cloud deployment? Per-capacity costs, based on transactions and data volumes, increase as my business grows Data storage costs as my business grows Functionality-based costs increase as my usage of the cloud software expands Per-user licensing costs increase as my headcount grows Cultural resistance a fear of new technology Base: 180 business and IT decision-makers responsible for planning and/or executing their organization s cloud strategy (top five responses shown) 53% 51% 49% 63% 61% Cloud is disruptive. Faster provisioning, consumption-based pricing, and flexible commercial agreements require organizations to manage the change so cloud is not seen as a threat to existing IT infrastructure investments, but rather a complement to it. Organization should start by first determining the business value of moving a particular work stream to the cloud and the associated impact this may have. The ongoing cost associated with cloud should be balanced with the business outcome and value to the organization. Cost

10 8 Organizations Must Seek Partners In Order To Realize The Benefits Of Cloud Keeping up with the pace of change trends for employees and customers adds huge pressure on the in-house resources and skills necessary to succeed. Over 30% of organizations surveyed identified the following as the main obstacles that IT faces in helping the organization be more responsive to market needs: the rate of technology change, compliance with regulatory requirements, and insufficient budgets. While cost will always be a key differentiator (34% of organizations selected this), organizations also look to partners to support process and organizational agility by demonstrating (see Figure 7): Knowledge and expertise. Partners can bring a wealth of knowledge and relevant industry expertise that organizations require to support their business priorities. A third of organizations highlighted knowledge and experience within their specific industry as being key criteria when selecting a technology provider. Process maturity. 31% of respondents indicated that partners must demonstrate the knowledge of the industryrelevant approaches to guide the organization to maturity. Organizations expect the service they receive to be delivered in a consistent and predictable way, adhering to strong industry best practices. A track record for success. A further 31% highlighted that a proven track record is required when selecting a partner to support their organization s business priorities. Organizations expect their cloud suppliers to demonstrate relevant case studies highlighting success and proven return on investment to boost their confidence. The ability to engage with stakeholders across the organization. 44% of business leaders and 35% of IT decision-makers selected closer alignment between business and IT as a key initiative to enhance to meet their business goals. So it comes as no surprise that organizations look to partners that are able to break down organizational siloes to ensure all relevant business and IT stakeholders are effectively engaged (31%). FIGURE 7 Organization Seek Partners With Specific Expertise And Experience Which of the following criteria do you use when selecting a technology provider to support your business priorities in 2015? Base: 180 business and IT decision-makers responsible for planning and/or executing their organization s cloud strategy (top five responses shown) Price or cost savings Knowledge of my firm s industry Process maturity (e.g., ITIL, CMMI, industry certifications) Track record/proven results Effectively engage with business and IT leaders 34% 33% 31% 31% 31% REQUIRED PARTNER SUPPORT VARIES BY CLOUD ADOPTION PHASE Firms and brands value partners that support rapid development and deployment of consumer quality apps at an acceptable cost. The cloud tidal wave has IT and business decision-makers looking for ways to smartly incorporate cloud services into their technology architectures and business plans. Cloud partners play a vital role in building and delivering new products and services and must be treated as part of the organization. When exploring organizations requirements at different phases of cloud adoption, we found that organizations have varying partner requirements (see Figure 8): Architecture guidance when preparing for cloud. When preparing for cloud transition, 61% indicated a need for guidance on the architectural changes required with cloud adoption. Organizations expect a cloud partner to understand how to technically integrate new cloud services into their existing technology infrastructure environment. For example, they expect partners to understand how provisioning occurs or how to configure

11 9 the network to support cloud. In addition, organizations expect guidance on how to operate and govern new cloud services. Application migration support during cloud execution. During the execution of cloud transitions, it is imperative for partners to provide application migration support (45%). Organizations often have many thousands of applications. Determining which of these can be virtualized for cloud environments can be a long and resource-intensive process. Organizations seek partners to sift through these applications in order to understand those that are good candidates to be migrated to the cloud. Professional services migration support when supporting cloud. Managing cloud services is a very different proposition than managing existing data center infrastructure. 45% of leaders surveyed indicated a need for partners to support entire cloud migration processes with professional services. Organizations seek suppliers that can support the operations of cloud services and potentially manage multiple cloud services across the portfolio (acting as a cloud broker). FIGURE 8 Organizations Expect Different Partner Support At Different Stages Of Cloud Adoption Phase Phase 1: Preparing your transition to cloud Phase 2: Executing your transition to cloud Phase 3: Support your operation of cloud services Top partner requirements - Architecture guidance (61%) - Application migration support (37%) - Dedicated project manager (36%) - Application migration support (45%) - Training for internal staff (44%) - Dedicated project manager (38%) - Manage entire migration with professional services (45%) - Implementation timeline and key milestones (37%) - Provide TCO/ROI analysis (35%) Base: 180 business and IT decision-makers responsible for planning and/or executing their organization s cloud strategy IT and business decision-makers seek collaboration with partners to address gaps in resources, skills, and knowledge required to fully embrace cloud for business agility. Partners play a critical role in being a trusted advisor, educating business and IT leaders on the value of cloud and what it could offer to them.

12 10 Key Recommendations Leveraging cloud services for increased business agility is by no means an easy task. To be successful in transforming the business with cloud-enabled services, IT and business decision-makers must: Avoid a big-bang approach to cloud computing. IT strategy is no longer about technology road maps. Through cloud adoption, IT strategy will have to become more incremental, with frequent revisions to ensure it is aligned with business goals. Cloud adoption should be pragmatic and realistic. It should follow the typical path of development, testing, and launching for a particular pilot project to understand the true business value. Business and IT leaders should consider the business outcomes they would like to achieve through the deployment of cloud for a particular business process or innovation. Once the business value has been identified, only then should organizations continue to broaden their cloud environments. Embrace the contract flexibility that cloud offers. Technology leaders should look to identify the workloads that require variable infrastructure capacity, such as those that are only required during peak period. For example, finance teams may only look to process more orders and invoices during the last day of business in each month. Organizations should take advantage of the variable pricing and contracts that cloud providers offer to only pay for the use of the service when it is required, rather than maintaining the service even when it is not being fully utilized. Adopt creative strategies to help business transformation. Adopting cloud is more than just a technical and security exercise. Cloud adoption can result in great improvements within an organization, but only if approached with a wide-angle lens that takes into account business-transformation-related activities. This requires organizations to think beyond traditional technology implementation communication and training plans. When rolling out cloud, organizations should consider more creative strategies to support the business transformation required to fully exploit it. For example, one organization that rolled out a cloud CRM solution throughout the enterprise identified new ways to engage with the whole organization by using bright spots of success with pilot projects that were tied to business outcomes. It also showcased high quality and fast delivery that were tied to productivity gains, identified power users to demonstrate solutions capabilities and support for other colleagues, and provided recognition and reward for fast adopters. Leverage third parties to support the scale and scope of changes required for business agility. To keep up with the pace of change required to adopt cloud adds huge pressure on in-house resources and skills necessary to succeed. Technology leaders should explore potential partners that can support them through all phases of cloud adoption. While the lowest-cost provider will always be attractive, organizations should seek partners that can provide strong architectural guidance, application migration support, project management, business case/roi analysis, and internal training. Specialist partners, who have deep subject knowledge and industry-relevant expertise, are not necessary the cheapest. Technology leaders need to consider the best services to complement their internal resources.

13 11 Appendix A: Methodology In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 180 enterprise-size organizations across all industries in Germany, the UK, and the US to evaluate how cloud-enabled IT and applications are allowing for business agility. Survey participants included decision-makers in IT responsible for planning and executing their organization s IT strategy and line-of-business decision-makers responsible for business-critical applications. Questions provided to the participants asked which initiatives organizations are investing in to achieve their business priorities, how well-aligned IT and the business are, what obstacles IT decision-makers face in helping the organization meet its business priorities, what benefits and concerns they have in adopting cloud, and the role that technology providers can play in supporting the business. The study was completed in July Appendix B: Demographics FIGURE 9 Survey Demographics: Geography And Employee Size In which country is your organization headquartered? How many employees work for your organization? United States 33% Germany 34% 20,000 or more 15% 1,000 to 4,999 53% United Kingdom 33% 5,000 to 19,999 32% Base: 180 business and IT decision-makers responsible for planning and/or executing their organization s cloud strategy

14 12 Appendix C: Endnotes 1 Forrester Research defines the age of the customer as a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers. Source: Technology Management In The Age Of The Customer, Forrester Research, Inc., October 10, Source: The Public Cloud Market Is Now In Hypergrowth, Forrester Research, Inc., April 24, Source: Master Business Agility With Cloud Platforms, Forrester Research, Inc., April 13, 2015.