Surge in global cloud application adoption
Cloud application adoption across all industries increased more than 71 percent in 2015, according to Bitglass. Their global report was compiled through an automated, cloud-based analysis of real-world traffic data from 113,000 organizations and more than 20 industry verticals, including finance, healthcare, education and government.
Among the most notable findings: cloud adoption in regulated industries experienced stronger-than-anticipated growth, up from 15 percent in 2014 to 39 percent in 2015.
“Industries like education and communications are leading the move to cloud, but the surprise is that large corporations, even in heavily regulated industries, are gaining confidence in using cloud apps,” says Nat Kausik, CEO of Bitglass. “The emergence of third-party security services from cloud access security brokers is helping to fill cloud security gaps and to make public cloud a reality for all industries.”
Key findings:
Regulated and unregulated Industries see rapid growth in adoption
While cloud adoption has doubled year-over-year in unregulated industries, it has nearly tripled in regulated industries like financial services and healthcare —a massive change from 2014. Cloud adoption in regulated industries has jumped from 15 percent in 2014 to 39 percent and adoption in unregulated industries has jumped from 26 percent last year to 50 percent this year.
Education setting the pace for cloud adoption, but security still a concern
While education is moving to the cloud faster than any other vertical, with an overall adoption rate of 83 percent, the industry has not shown a strong preference for one cloud app over another, with 42 percent on Google apps and 41 percent on Office 365. Furthermore, only 6.8 percent of the institutions with Google Apps and 13 percent of institutions with Office 365 use single sign-on, the most basic cloud security function.
BYOD and mobile intertwined with healthcare industry’s need for cloud applications
Healthcare has grown to 37 percent cloud adoption, up from only eight percent in 2014, but remains a laggard due in part to HIPAA compliance concerns. Finding security solutions continues to be a challenge for the healthcare industry due to privacy concerns and limited applicability of Mobile Device Management solutions, where doctors have multiple hospital affiliations but only one device.
Large government organizations moving to cloud more rapidly than smaller counterparts
47 percent of U.S. government organizations, including state and local governments and contractors have adopted cloud apps. A surprisingly high proportion of government organizations with over 1000 employees, fifty-three percent, have adopted cloud apps. Twenty-seven percent of government organizations sampled use Office 365 and 19 percent use Google Apps.
Other leaders and laggards in the cloud adoption continuum
Media and entertainment (55.5 percent), communications (61 percent) and technology sectors (51 percent) all showed high adoption rates, while the financial sector (37.5 percent) made up significant ground year-over-year. While finance made great strides, the industry will likely continue to lag behind others due to high compliance and security requirements.