Majority of Businesses Will Be 100% Cloud-based by 2020

The number of organizations that run 100 percent of their IT in the cloud is rapidly increasing: by 2020, 62 percent of all organizations will do so.

That’s the word from BetterCloud, whose recent survey found that enterprise organizations run an average of 18 cloud applications today. By 2017, that number will nearly triple (52).

Today, 12 percent of organizations surveyed run 100 percent of their IT in the cloud; in five years almost 50 percent of our respondents said they will be moving their IT entirely to the cloud; in 10 years, that number will climb to nearly 70 percent.

Every year, more organizations will abandon legacy applications (think Microsoft Exchange) for their lighter, more nimble replacements: cloud applications (think Office 365 and Google Apps). In doing so, organizations of all ages and sizes will begin to rely on the cloud–not only for cloud office systems, but for their entire IT infrastructure.

Further, 66 percent of Google Apps customers who took the survey expect to run 100 percent of their IT in the cloud by 2020, versus only 49 percent of Office 365 customers.

For some (commonly smaller, younger and Google-based) organizations, the shift to cloud office systems is a headfirst dive into total transformation–an entirely new way of working. For others (commonly larger, older and Microsoft-based), the transition to the cloud must be gradual. These companies likely find comfort in continuity, easing the transition by avoiding an overnight overhaul of the way people work.

The survey also found that by 2020, more than 50 percent of all SMB organizations surveyed expect to run 100 percent of their IT in the cloud, while enterprises are a full five years behind–not until 2025 will 50 percent of enterprise organizations run 100 percent of their IT in the cloud.

The quicker rate of adoption gives smaller organizations a distinct advantage. Small businesses can adapt faster, quickly transforming their organization and enabling employees to work from anywhere at any time. Enterprises face the challenge of transitioning potentially hundreds (or even thousands) of legacy applications to the cloud. It’s not out of the ordinary for some enterprises, particularly those using Lotus Notes, to run more than 10,000+ custom applications.

Even though enterprise organizations face a more difficult path to cloud adoption, over time, the gap between small businesses and enterprises begins to shrink.