Dive Brief:
- Cloud managers in the manufacturing and automotive industries are adept at running systems but less confident in their ability to monitor, predict and control cost, according to Infosys. The IT consulting firm surveyed more than 2,500 cloud practitioners, including 412 in the automotive and manufacturing industries.
- More than half of manufacturing cloud managers reported difficulty monitoring cloud spend and nearly the same proportion said optimizing and predicting cost were challenging.
- Cloud today delivers more capabilities, which is clearly beneficial,” Jasmeet Singh, EVP and global head of manufacturing at Infosys, said. “However, the architecture, applications and funding model has grown more complex.”
Dive Insight:
Cloud adoption is a decision. Adapting to the technology is a process that can take years.
Manufacturing and automotive companies quickly adopted cloud, Infosys found. The sectors saw nearly 1 in 10 enterprises initiate migrations to AWS, Azure or Google Cloud in 2010. By the end of the decade, most manufacturers and automobile companies had a cloud footprint.
“The automotive and manufacturing industries are well past the cloud adoption stage,” Singh said, noting that 80% of the cloud services used by companies surveyed had been in service for nine or more years.
In a scenario that’s played out across industries, manufacturers harness cloud’s power to drive innovation, unlock revenue streams and modernize legacy systems. They’re more wary of migrating mature functions, such as testing and quality control, Infosys found.
“Cloud has become the industry standard,” Singh said. “Where companies keep systems on premise, it is purposeful for regulatory or intellectual property reasons and, in a small number of cases, for legacy systems that will be retired soon.”
Innovation comes at a price. Manufacturing companies spend an average of $30 million annually on cloud infrastructure and services, on par with retail but below average yearly spend in healthcare, energy and banking.
While 4 in 5 respondents expect cloud investments to rise this year, many are still sitting on unused prepaid credits, Infosys found. Respondents acknowledged they had only consumed 48% of their companies cloud commitments, an endemic enterprise oversight, according to ProsperOps data.
Singh attributed the disparity to overly optimistic expectations for what ultimately shifts to cloud.
