UK firms shift to mobile and cloud technology, says SAP study

Those are the key findings of a survey of CIOs in 250 UK PLCs having more than 1,000 employees, conducted by enterprise software giant SAP – which found scalability improvements cited by 62% of respondents, with speed of deployment and cost savings also high on the agenda. The study suggests that, over the next five years, UK companies will gradually shift towards a mix of running applications on-demand on-device, using the cloud model, alongside conventional on-premise. SAP's survey does not suggest a headlong rush to cloud: on premise looks set to continue to be the primary software model, with 61% of new software investments still on-premise over the next 12 months, as companies favour the perceived benefit of total control. However, Tim Noble, managing director at SAP UK and Ireland, reckons that, as companies gain confidence in cloud and users push for greater flexibility, investment in on-device and on-demand models will increase, the firm predicts. "The shift to on-demand and on-device software is indicative of businesses' need for faster deployment, access to real-time data, and improved performance," comments noble. "It is also led by demand from the end user, who increasingly wants access to business critical applications on the go. From this research it's clear that, over the next five years, we are going to see British companies favouring a hybrid approach to software." Noble agrees that on-premise will still play a key role but suggests that on-demand will now see rapid growth. "At SAP we are well set up to provide our customers with the choice and flexibility they need, offering a mix of on-demand, on-device and on-premise solutions." Looking specifically at manufacturing, he points to the survey's findings that most manufacturers budgets have decreased this year, in comparison to last. He also notes that mobile access to business critical apps is least important for manufacture, with only 26% of respondents believing it to be very important. In fact, 39% of manufacturing respondents say that 1—5% of their organisations' workforce are mobile workers. Interestingly, 63% of manufacturing respondents also said that their organisations already use on-demand services, while the same percentage claimed that their organisations also use on-device services. Looking at specifics, SAP's study appears to show that manufacturers are most likely to run on-demand in CRM (44%), financial applications and HR (both 40%) – but least likely to run on-demand in GRC applications.