More than 50% of enterprises are looking at cloud applications as a foundation for digital transformation, according to new Infosys research.

The desire to advance digital transformation has seen 75% of enterprises either deploying cloud applications or are in the process of moving to the cloud, the research shows.

Infosys executive vice president and global head enterprise application services, Dinesh Rao, says, “As digital disruption impacts incumbents across industries, the responsiveness of their operating models is what differentiates the best from the rest.

“However, enterprises face many challenges as they navigate the path towards being more sentient, 'live' enterprises - including choosing the right cloud approach, technology investments to repurpose and keeping up with data security.

The survey revealed many key findings. Some of which were:

54% of enterprises look at cloud applications as a foundation for their organisation's digital transformation.

75% of enterprises have either deployed cloud applications or are in the process of deploying one with high-tech and telecom industries leading in the space.

Nearly 40% of enterprises are looking at standardisation of enterprise cloud applications stack versus best-of-breed solutions. Better interoperability between systems (59%) and collaboration (61%) are seen as the top benefits of this approach.

Visionary enterprises see greater agility to respond to changing market conditions as the biggest advantage of cloud applications adoption, while most enterprises view improved data security and superior customer experience among the top benefits.

Stakeholder confidence on ROI is the top apprehension (60%) while organisational readiness is second (40%) during cloud application transformation.

Accurate estimation of time and costs (51%), monitoring systems (51%), aligning existing legacy systems with new technologies (49%) and promoting a culture change within the organisation (48%) are seen as major challenges in operationalising cloud application transformation programme.

Enterprises where business executive layer (CEO, COO, CFO etc.) are more involved across various stages of cloud application adoption have higher levels of clarity on their digital transformation and are more satisfied with the progress of cloud journey.

Infosys Knowledge Institute (IKI), the thought leadership and research arm of Infosys, published its global market research report on the current cloud application landscape, 'Behind the scenes of an intelligent enterprise: moving enterprise applications to the cloud.'

The report highlights drivers and objectives for enterprises to adopt cloud applications, their methods and extent of adoption, along with implementation approaches, strategy and pain points.

For this study, Infosys surveyed 853 senior executives representing firms from 12 industries, across U.S., Europe, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).

A total of 853 senior executives and leaders involved in digital and cloud initiatives responded to this research, which took place in July 2019. Only companies with more than US $1 billion were chosen and twelve industries were covered. The report is currently available.