2015 IT priorities: On-premise deployments high on agenda, but cloud interest on the rise

While on-premise will remain the IT deployment model of choice for many IT managers in 2015, there are signs its hold on the enterprise is weakening, as cloud-based technologies grow in popularity.   

According to the 2015 Computer Weekly/TechTarget IT priorities survey, on-premise is the favoured deployment model, with 57% of the 111 UK IT managers questioned opting for it over a variety of cloud-based technologies this year.

This figure is slightly down on last year, when 65% of participants expressed their preference for on-premise technologies.

With software as a service (SaaS) emerging as respondents’ second most popular IT deployment method at 49%, the results could be interpreted as a sign that cloud technologies are growing in popularity.

This overall preference for on-premise technologies is not replicated across the rest of Europe, though, as the majority of the 590 respondents in a similar, continent-wide Computer Weekly/TechTarget poll chose SaaS as their preferred deployment model.

There were other encouraging signs that interest in cloud is on the rise, as off-premise services came joint second (with software) in the poll, with 36% of the vote, when respondents were asked to name the technologies they expect to spend more on in 2015.

By contrast, in the 2014 UK version of the study, cloud came third in this part of the poll with 31%, following hardware (49%) and software (52%).

Cloud storage also emerged in the study as the number one storage initiative IT managers plan to work on in 2015, with 35% of respondents voting for it. This trend was repeated in the European and global versions of the survey.

This was followed by storage for virtual environments (26%) and storage virtualisation (19%).