Cloud Computing Confidence Expected to Drive Economic Growth, According to Global Savvis Study

ST. LOUIS, July 21, 2010 – The flexibility of cloud computing could help organizations recover from the current global economic downturn, according to 68 percent of IT and businesses decision makers who participated in an annual study commissioned by Savvis, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVVS), a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises.

Vanson Bourne, an international research firm, surveyed more than 600 IT and business decision makers across the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore, revealing an underlying pressure to do more with less budget (the biggest issue facing organizations, cited by 54 percent of respondents) and demand for lower cost, more flexible IT provisioning.

The study, in its second year, reveals that IT decision makers are confident in cloud computing’s ability to deliver budget savings. Commercial and public sector respondents predict cloud use will decrease IT budgets by an average of 15 percent, with some respondents expecting savings of more than 40 percent.

“Flexibility and pay-as-you-go elasticity are driving many of our clients toward cloud computing,” said Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer at Savvis. “However, it’s important, especially for our large enterprise clients, to work with an IT provider that not only delivers cost savings, but also tightly integrates technologies, applications and infrastructure on a global scale.”

A lack of access to IT capacity is clearly identified as a barrier to business progress, with 76 percent of business decision makers reporting they have been prevented from developing or piloting projects due to the cost or constraints within IT. For 55 percent of respondents, this remains an issue.

Global research highlights indicate that:

• Confidence in cloud continues to grow – 96 percent of IT decision makers are as confident or more confident in cloud computing being enterprise ready now than they were in 2009.
• 70 percent of IT decision makers are using or plan to be using enterprise-class cloud within two years.
• Singapore is leading the shift to cloud, with 76 percent of responding organizations using cloud computing. The U.S. follows with 66 percent, with the U.K. at 57 percent.
• The ability to scale resources up and down in order to manage fluctuating business demand was the most cited benefit influencing cloud adoption in the U.S. (30 percent) and Singapore (42 percent). The top factor driving U.K. adoption is lower cost of total ownership (41 percent).
• Security concerns remain a key barrier to cloud adoption, with 52 percent of respondents who do not use cloud citing security of sensitive data as a concern. Yet 73 percent of all respondents want cloud providers to fully manage security or to fully manage security while allowing configuration change requests from the client.
• Seventy-nine percent of IT decision makers see cloud as a straightforward way to integrate with corporate systems. A copy of the Rising to the Challenge IT decision maker report can be found at http://savvis.itleadership.info/. Details about the Savvis Symphony suite of cloud services can be found at http://www.savvisknowscloud.com.

About Savvis
Savvis, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVVS) is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises. More than 2,500 unique clients, including 30 of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500, use Savvis to reduce capital expense, improve service levels and harness the latest advances in cloud computing. For more information, please visit www.savvis.net.

About the survey
This independent survey was commissioned by Savvis and carried out with 456 chief information officers, chief technology officers, IT directors and heads of IT and 202 chief executive officers, managing directors, directors and senior managers of global mid-size and large organizations based in the United Kingdom, Singapore and United States. The research was conducted by Vanson Bourne, a research-based technology marketing consultancy. This year’s study also surveyed 202 senior business decision makers from U.K.- and U.S.-based organizations. Both elements used an online fieldwork methodology, and all research carried out by Vanson Bourne adheres to the latest MRS Code of Conduct. Demographic detailing respondent communities includes industry sector, country in which the respondents were based and size of business.