60% of enterprises plan to shift their IT into the cloud by 2020

More than half of enterprises want to become cloud-first businesses by 2020 according to the latest report by 451 Research, with the majority attracted to the public cloud and SaaS services.

The most popular areas businesses want to use cloud for are business intelligence, machine learning/artificial intelligence and big data, suggesting information processing is the most attractive reason for switching to cloud-based infrastructure rather than on-premise solutions.

Despite businesses wanting to move their data management to the cloud rather than on-premise, more than 60% of them are lacking the strategy to drive a successful transformation.

"The survey suggests that many but certainly not all organizations are finally reaching the point where they can focus on endeavors that help differentiate the business, instead of merely keeping the lights on," said Melanie Posey, research vice president and general manager of 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise division.

"In 2018 we expect to see much of this effort focused around a new set of approaches to data optimization and analysis."

Respondents to 451 Research's survey revealed Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are set to become the biggest strategic suppliers of cloud technologies to the enterprise, with Microsoft holding 35% of the market in 2019 compared to 33% today and AWS's share increasing from 7% today to 17% in two years' time.

Almost a third of businesses say that machine learning and AI is a priority as part of their business transformation, although only 12% are making use of the technology today. 12% of respondents explained the importance of Blockchain as part of their re-organisation, but this is expected to increase over the next 12 months as businesses start to deploy the tech this year.