Accenture’s cloud research reveals significant untapped potential for U.S. & Canadian companies

There is still much to do to truly exploit the transformative potential of cloud services. As the world grapples with the effects of COVID-19, every company must dramatically accelerate their cloud migration to enable end-to-end digital transformation. In short, cloud is not an option, it’s a mandate.

In our latest report, “Sky High Hopes: Navigating the Barriers to Maximizing Cloud Value,” we surveyed senior business executives at global companies to pinpoint how far they’ve advanced in terms of the business value achieved from cloud initiatives.

What did we find?

Despite the obvious advantages of innovation, agility and flexibility and years of investment in cloud, full value realization remains a stubborn challenge. North American companies are experiencing the most success with cloud compared to other regions of the world—42% report having fully achieved their expected outcomes. But that still means more than half are not getting the value that they expected from their cloud initiatives.

So, what’s standing in the way?

It turns out that US and Canadian respondents cited some common hurdles. Even as cloud adoption grows, the misalignment between IT and business remains a challenge—40% of U.S. and Canadian executives surveyed cite this as a leading barrier. Another top issue CEOs reported was a lack of proper cloud skills. So, organizations are not just facing technical challenges, but also human and organizational issues as they pivot their skills and ways of working for cloud. 

Security and compliance risks also continue to be a top concern, even though companies that are more “cloud mature” also tend to be more secure. Most applications don’t reside in the cloud and everything that sits on top of the cloud will reside in the cloud. Ultimately, security requires teamwork between companies and their partners to outline actionable steps to take to help mitigate risk.

Other barriers include legacy infrastructure and application sprawl (14%) and complexity of business and operational change (14%).

The good news?

There’s still ample opportunity to fully uncover the transformative potential of cloud services. Four key areas companies should address include:

• Business value focus. Develop an optimal cloud strategy anchored to comprehensive economic business cases to identify revenue upside and cost efficiency opportunities while aligning goals and putting company leaders on the same page.
• Workforce and culture change management. Implement talent readiness programs and new operating models to evolve culture, transforming how people work and what work they do to meet rapidly changing needs.
• Data and AI. Unlock industry- and function-specific data insights and intelligence trapped in legacy systems with the power of cloud data models.
• Partnering for success. Leverage the skills and experience of the appropriate partners to augment your own capabilities. Cloud managed services is often an option for companies looking to access the right skills while maintaining cost efficiency.  

Additionally, many have viewed cloud as a like-for-like replacement for their existing on-premise data centers. This means running key business applications in the cloud the same way as was done on-premise. What is required instead is a thoughtful cloud strategy to migrate, modernize, operate and optimize with a cloud-first mindset. It’s important to take simple steps to start, like shutting down idle infrastructure and then focusing on more sophisticated application modernization, for example.

The bottom line: Cloud is now an essential component of the future of business. While companies in the U.S. and Canada are the most mature, many are still struggling to get the maximum value from their cloud investments. To achieve the full potential of cloud requires much more than technology—it requires organizations to adopt and commit to fundamentally new ways of working, shift to new operating models, develop new roles and skills and embrace a “cloud first” mindset.