Cloud adoption rate rises in worldwide manufacturing industry

By Rebecca Gibson on 16 April 2015

Cloud adoption rate rises in worldwide manufacturing industry

Around two thirds of manufacturers worldwide have deployed more than two applications on private and public cloud platforms, and plan to pursue ‘cloud-first’ or ‘cloud also’ strategies, according to IDC.

The figures were outlined in IDC Manufacturing Insights’ Worldwide Cloud Adoption in the Manufacturing Industry study, which is based on data from various IDC reports including the 2014 CloudView Survey.

IDC’s study indicated that 41% of US manufacturers already use public cloud platforms to access IT resources, while 50% of European manufacturers run, or plan to run, their enterprise resource planning operations in the public cloud. In addition, 49% of Asia-based manufacturers are using, or intend to use, public or private cloud solutions.

While IDC’s study indicated that manufacturers had reduced traditional IT spending, respondents predicted that manufacturing companies will allocate 27% more of their annual IT budgets to improving services and cloud architectures over the next two years.

“Manufacturers are in the midst of a digital transformation, in which third-platform technologies are absolutely essential to the way they do business and in the products and services they provide to their customers,” said Kimberly Knickle, research director at IDC Manufacturing Insights. “The cloud’s tremendous value in making IT resources available to the business based on business terms – speed, cost and accessibility – means manufacturers must ensure that the line of business and IT management work together in defining their requirements.”

Today, manufacturers mainly use cloud solutions to manage IT operations, but at least 30-35% of survey respondents aim to deploy this type of platform to control business operations, product development, supply chain and logistics, sales and engineering processes more cost effectively in the future.

More companies ware also expected to deploy cloud platforms to collect, analyse and use data from sensors on connected products, plant equipment and assets in the supply chain, enabling them to capitalise on the growth of the internet of things.

Meanwhile, around 61% of manufacturers who are considering new IT services and 57% of those looking to replace existing IT infrastructures plan to adopt a ‘cloud also’ strategy. This will enable them to implement a cloud platform alongside traditional IT solutions.