As cloud adoption amongst UK business enters the mainstream, only 44 per cent of firms say that the flexibility it offers them has lived up to expectations, according to a new study.

A study of the views of around 500 decision makers working in digital business in the UK found that cloud platforms and storage solutions are only offering the expected efficiencies to 31 per cent, followed by productivity gains (31 per cent) and mobile (21 per cent).

Nearly half of businesses (49 per cent) said they had a cloud strategy in place, while 35 per cent identified their organisation as an innovator or early adopter of the cloud.

Nevertheless, just 19 per cent said cloud adoption has given them a better user experience.
As a result, almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of respondents said their organisation should be using multiple software solutions rather than one to run core operations as part of a multi-source strategy.

The study found that the benefits of this approach include the increased flexibility multiple solutions can offer (52 per cent lower risk of failure (40 per cent) and the fact that firms would not be tied into one vendor (20 per cent).

In addition, a total of 70 per cent of respondents said a lack of integration between their organisation's business software is holding their organisation back from achieving successful digital transformation while 61 per cent said a lack of integration between their organisation’s business software is holding them and their team back from doing their job effectively.

Responding to the survey results, Jon Wrennall, chief technology officer at Advanced said: “The cloud is fast becoming the preferred choice for positive digital disruption, but it seems it’s not giving businesses what they want on a number of levels.

“It begs the question: are organisations being distracted by hyped-up cloud tools over prioritising software that is relevant to their own unique needs?," he asked.

The report concluded the cloud should be inherent in all business software their organisation uses, arguing that this paves the way for ‘disaggregation’ in which businesses move away from monolithic contracts and realign technology products and services more closely to their individual requirements.

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