CIOs admit they are concerned about Saas management

The majority of organisations are running applications in the cloud, but IT managers are concerned they are losing control of the Saas budget.

The survey of 125 UK-based IT directors and CIOs from Vanson Bourne for Centrix Software, reported that nearly 90% of organisations have some sort of cloud-based application in use.

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Only 11% said that they have no applications running in the cloud.

The financial services and government sectors are the furthest behind in cloud app adoption, with 20% of CIOs saying they had no cloud-based app usage and 24% of financial services CIOs said they do not plan to focus on cloud apps in 2015.

Office productivity is the top cloud app category in use across all types of organisations, whereas newer app categories are not widely adopted in the cloud (only 2% ranked marketing automation as their top solution and 6% put it in their top three).

The survey found that responsibility for purchasing and managing cloud-based apps  is increasingly shared between IT and business users.

The CIOs surveys said that over half of cloud apps are bought by business users.

According to over a third of all CIOs the growing cost of cloud subscriptions, managing the increasing number of cloud apps in use, and duplication of app functionality were in their top three concerns.

Tracking and measuring usage is a big challenge. The survey found that 38% of organisations use the admin function of each separate cloud app to track and measure usage .

Lisa Hammond, CEO of Centrix Software, which produces workplace management tools, said: "Today’s IT leaders need to monitor, analyse, prioritise and evaluate rates of cloud app adoption so they can understand cloud app usage and consumption. It’s only those who have accurate information about cloud usage who will be able to spot cloud app trends, proactively forecast demand and identify the business value of migrating apps to the cloud or introducing new types of cloud apps."