News

AWS Is Top Choice for Enterprises Moving to the Cloud

• By David Ramel
• 02/20/2015

Skyhigh Networks released a survey showing that Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) leads the growing list of services designed to help enteprises move their operations to the cloud.

The "Cloud Adoption & Risk Report Q4 2014" garnered input from more than 15 million users, the company said. While the report emphasizes concerns about security, compliance and governance issues, it also includes insights about general cloud usage.

For example, the number of cloud services coming online continues to climb steadily, showing a 43 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2013. Respondents reported using an average of 897 cloud services, up from 626 last year.

"2014 will go down as the year of the cloud's arrival as a fundamental tool for the Global 5000 enterprise," said Skyhigh exec Kamal Shah in an accompanying statement. "The average employee uses 27 cloud services."

According to the report, "The cloud has created a new wave of enterprise software that is not only faster to develop, easier to deploy, and more cost effective, but also offers innovative features not found elsewhere. That's because much of the innovation today is happening in software delivered via the cloud, and for many customers, the cloud is mainstream."

"Amazon Web Services continues to dominate the list this quarter, followed by services from industry giants Microsoft, Salesforce and Cisco," the report states. It noted that AWS competitors such as Microsoft, SAP and Oracle have been buying their way into the business via acquisitions of other companies in their chase of AWS, which pioneered the movement in 2006.

Here's the full top 10 list of enterprise cloud service leaders:

1. AWS
2. Microsoft Office 365
3. Salesforce
4. Cisco WebEx
5. ServiceNow
6. Yammer
7. Concur
8. Box
9. Zendesk
10. LivePerson

The data jives with that from other studies, such as one recently released by Synergy Research Group that indicated AWS market share among cloud infrastructure service providers hit a five-year high in Q4 2014.

Cloud security company Skyhigh noted that with increased cloud usage comes increased security concerns, and risky behavior continues, as the company reported earlier.

"Although the study found a record high percentage of cloud applications with enterprise-ready security capabilities, risks associated with shadow IT persist," Skyhigh said. "These risks include use of cloud services that don't encrypt data at rest, external sharing of sensitive corporate data, and compromised credentials."