Cloud in European Vertical Markets - Expected Evolution of Cloud Adoption in the Retail, Manufacturing and Energy/Utilities Sectors

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Jan 22, 2014, 06:20 ET

DUBLIN, January 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/rt2xcx/cloud_in_european) has announced the addition of the "Cloud in European Vertical Markets - Expected Evolution of Cloud Adoption in the Retail, Manufacturing and Energy/Utilities Sectors" report to their offering.

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Globally, enterprises are moving their IT infrastructure to the cloud, aiming to benefit from advantages of scalability and cost. However, the rate of adoption of cloud is varied with some sectors quick to implement the cloud and others choosing a more gradual approach. In this study, Frost & Sullivan discusses the pace of cloud adoption in 3 sectors - retail, manufacturing, and energy - which exhibit different trends of cloud implementation. The study also highlights the challenges encountered by the energy, retail, and manufacturing verticals and how implementation of cloud can help improve overall efficiency.

State of Cloud Adoption Among Vertical Sectors

The adoption of cloud is expected to benefit organisations due to the cost-effectiveness, simplicity, flexibility, and scalability offered by the model. However, apprehensions concerned with transitioningto new technologies and internal barriers to migration have caused verticals to react differently to implementation of the cloud.
Verticals are at different stages of adoption with traditionally conservative industries exhibiting slowtransition than others and with reasonably optimistic outlook towards implementation of new technologies.
The report aims to analyse the state of adoption and areas for cloud implementation in the energy, retail, and manufacturing. As these are the 3 industries identified asmost likely to drive smart transformation, there was the need to illustrate the current cloud technologies landscape. This research is based on primary (interviews with stakeholders in the markets) and secondary inputs.
The retail sector is the most advanced industry that has adopted cloud technologies. This could be due to the common theme observed in most sectors in the willingness to migrate enterprise applications to the cloud while continuing to operate mission-critical systems on legacy systems.
Manufacturing remains slow in cloud technologies adoption despite expectations that the sector would have progressed significantly into smart manufacturing processes via information and communications technologies. The energy sector is the slowest in cloud technologies adoption.
An industry with inherent seasonal shifts, the retail sector is customer-facing with an increasing need to use emerging technology trends such as mobile and social media. It, therefore, stands to benefit from the scalability offered by the cloud.
This research service will identify the key areas of cloud transition in the retail sector and highlight current cases of retailers and vendors using this technology in the market.
The global nature of manufacturing business necessitates the use of cloud technology that can integrate operations across the world, reducing delays due to co-ordination between stakeholders in the manufacturing process.
The report discusses the options available for manufacturers to migrate to cloud-based solutions as it traditionally relies on applications that are part of the enterprise resource planning suite.
The energy sector is a traditionally conservative and risk-averse industry and is, therefore, relatively slow in the adoption of cloud. However, the rise in big data and the need to be cost-efficient is expected to increase investment in cloud.
The report investigates the forces behind transition of energy applications to the cloud and examines the different cases for cloud implementation, as well as the opinions of utilities.
The following sections in this research will discuss the challenges encountered by energy, retail, and manufacturing verticals and how implementation of cloud can help improve overall efficiency.