Community News, IT Management, Manager Magazine 2023

Cloud Usage is Growing

According to the digital association Bitkom, cloud computing has established itself in Germany and is now on the verge of significant growth. In five years, 56 percent of all companies want to run more than half of their IT applications from the cloud.

E3 Magazine

September 7, 2023

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This text has been automatically translated from German to English.

Every second company wants to invest in cloud solutions this year, and two-thirds are planning to do so in 2024 or later. These are the findings of a representative survey of 554 companies with 20 or more employees from all sectors of the economy commissioned by the digital association Bitkom.

"Today, practically all companies are already using cloud applications," said Bitkom CEO Bernhard Rohleder. "At the same time, however, it is also true that companies will not move all IT applications to the cloud, at least in the medium term."

Cost and performance

In this year's investment report of the SAP user association DSAG, respondents were asked for their assessment of SAP's pricing policy in the cloud environment. Only five percent described themselves as satisfied with this and 20 percent rated their status as neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. "Of course, this result does not hide the fact that almost half of the respondents do not like SAP's pricing policy. But I see this as a fundamental problem that customer companies have with all cloud solution providers," says Jens Hungershausen, CEO of DSAG e. V., summing up the result. And he adds: "The planned annual price increase for SAP cloud services has caused a lot of criticism among DSAG members. An annual recurring increase in prices makes it more difficult for companies to move to the cloud."

Bitkom has surveyed that one in nine companies using the cloud has a cloud-only strategy, which would correspond to SAP's goals. A further 36 percent rely on cloud-first, which means that cloud solutions are preferred for new projects and existing applications are moved to the cloud as required - a path also recommended by the DSAG association, among others.

For 35 percent, cloud-to-o applies, i.e. at least partially supplementing existing IT solutions. "Almost half of all companies prefer cloud solutions for new IT projects. This is a clear signal to software providers," says Rohleder. The most common use is storage in the cloud (92 percent), followed by web conferencing (76 percent). Cloud-based databases are used by 60 percent, ERP systems by 30 percent, which is also reflected in the DSAG investment report.

For SAP cloud solutions, 24 percent told DSAG they were making high and medium investments in the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). "SAP is positioning the BTP as a central element of its strategy. Against this background, it is understandable that survey participants are considering this SAP cloud solution," said Jens Hungershausen. (pmf)