European companies are not appropriately using the cloud and cloud-enabled technologies to target more ambitious business goals, such as sustainability and exceptional customer and employee experience.
Most European business leaders use cloud in their organizations today. Early on in 2020, when the world of business was reeling from a fast-spreading pandemic, European companies took a global lead in compressed migration, moving workloads to the cloud in months rather than years to keep up with changing behaviors. The result is impressive: nine out of 10 companies in Europe report cost savings on the cloud, much more than the seven out of 10 in North America.
But now, their early lead is dissipating; they risk falling behind.
That’s because many of them confine their activities on the cloud by viewing it merely as shared, public data centers that host workloads to reduce costs. Our research earlier this year found “cost savings” was the top priority for European senior executives in 2020; this is in sharp contrast to “increased customer value” for
