The 2020 Frost & Sullivan Cloud User Survey (European Edition) reveals the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on European enterprises’ priorities and technology investments. Conducted in August 2020, the survey garnered responses from 434 IT and business decision-makers from 4 European countries, namely France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Responses indicated that the best acknowledgment of pandemic-related disruptions came from enterprises that were well into their digital transformation and cloud journeys. The study examines enterprises’ infrastructure plan response to the pandemic; it also discusses how the pandemic has accelerated the urgency and the complexity of businesses’ cloud journeys.

Some of the interesting findings of the survey are discussed below:

1. Improving business process and operational efficiencies and the ability to understand and adapt to changing customer behavior became enterprise priorities due to the pandemic. Therefore, IT budgets were focused on serving these needs through collaborations, the modernization of company data centers, and flexible networking, which also became key technology initiatives not just in Europe but across the world as well.

2. Hybrid and multi-cloud deployments are witnessing rapid growth; deployments are likely to double by 2022 as a growing number of enterprises realize the flexibility and the agility they provide.

3. European respondents demonstrated excessive confidence about the status of their digital transformation efforts, although to a lower degree than their counterparts in other regions. Approximately 90% of European enterprises think that they are further along or are on an equal footing with their competitors in terms of their digital transformation journeys. Confusing digitalization with true transformation (that is, the use of technology to transform value creation for customers and stakeholders) is a risk.

Author: Anisha Vinny