Yes… according to a recent Forbes survey of business executives.
We wanted to understand how the cloud was perceived in the market so we sponsored some research to be carried out by Forbes Insights. The results are published in the ‘Collaborating in the Cloud’ report on the Forbes website and Cisco has supported with a press release.
We were very excited by the results because after surveying over 500 senior executives across a range of industries our eyes were opened to some new and very interesting findings.
I would like to highlight what we heard specifically from the ‘leaders’* that were interviewed. The key findings provide strong evidence that the cloud presents a great opportunity to extend the advantages of collaboration technologies and that the more cloud is embraced, the more it can drive strategic business value and competitive advantage for your business.
The key finding:
- Cloud solutions accelerate business results – 82% of ‘leaders’ said that cloud-based collaboration tools help businesses execute faster than would be possible otherwise. This can shorten time to market, quicken product upgrade cycles and lead to faster responses to competitive challenges.
- Cloud enhances collaboration across time zones and functional boundaries - 87% said that capabilities enabled by cloud-based solutions represent a true breakthrough in collaboration. Cloud-based collaboration tools enable a wide array of enhanced capabilities in areas such as communication, product and service delivery, information sharing, tapping knowledge resources and group problem solving.
- Cloud enables more-efficient business processes - 90% reported that cloud-based collaboration has the potential to improve business processes. Business processes include purchasing, manufacturing, marketing, sales and technical support. (The report details some specific examples of business transformation enabled by the cloud.)
- Cloud collaboration promotes innovation - 93% of leaders agree that cloud-based collaboration stimulates innovation. Indeed, enhanced innovation is an almost unavoidable consequence of providing more executives and workers with new and more effective ways of sharing information, enabling business model innovation and new service delivery options with more people both within and without their organizations.
- Cloud is not solely an IT discussion - 75% of those identified as "leaders" say that non-IT executives are becoming more involved in the selection, implementation, and management processes relating to cloud-based collaboration tools. In short, cloud collaboration is not an IT discussion but a broader business discussion.
But don’t just take my word for it. Please read Forbes Insights’ study “Collaborating in the Cloud” and consider how cloud could be an integral part of your company’s strategy to pursue high value from your IT investments.
* Leaders, as defined in the survey (14% of the sample), are executives (CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, CFOs, vice presidents of IT and non-IT executives who are department heads) with significantly greater experience and familiarity with cloud-based collaboration tools and strategies than others in the survey.
