Dendrio, a Romanian entrepreneurial company specialized in integrating IT&C solutions, part of Bittnet Group together with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the largest and most comprehensive Cloud platform worldwide, conducted a study on the adoption of Cloud solutions in Romanian companies. The objective of the research was to understand the level of adoption of Cloud technologies in Romanian companies, what type of Cloud they use, what are the challenges encountered in using the Cloud, what cost reduction mechanisms they use or what is the budget dedicated to the development of employees who use new technologies.
“According to Eurostat statistics, Romania ranks last in the EU in terms of digitalization, and the adoption rate of Cloud services. In 2020, only 16% of companies had implemented such services. Romanian companies are still skeptical in adopting these technologies, although they can offer them a real competitive advantage. The pandemic brought companies into a situation where they began to feel the need for digitalization in the context of remote work and processes. Thus, organizations that use such services can survive better under stress conditions, as they can work from anywhere and anytime, launch new products faster, offer smarter services and significantly lower operating costs through the use of automation, and of artificial intelligence. They can also better protect themselves against cyberattacks. Through the study conducted with our partners at AWS we wanted to understand what are the challenges and objections that determine local companies to avoid implementing cloud solutions,” stated Cristian Herghelegiu, CEO Dendrio Solutions and VP of Technology at Bittnet Group.
The study found that although companies have begun to discover the benefits of Cloud in recent years, the adoption rate remains low, 73% of companies surveyed stated that they do not have a dedicated department. This can be influenced by either the size of the organization or the Cloud needs in relation to the services offered by the external provider. At the same time, the reluctance of Romanians in adopting Cloud solutions is mainly related to the lack of internal resources, as well as possible problems in maintaining data security.
Regarding the size of the Cloud department, 97% of companies have a team of 1 to 5 people, while 3% have over 5 people. Outsourcing Cloud services means in most cases a decrease in the need for resources allocated in this area by the IT department. A specialized team can even be a person who stays in touch with the provider, requests certain services or may send complaints. Depending on the contracted Cloud services, some activities may remain under the responsibility of the internal IT department, such aspect being discussed at the time of outsourcing the services.
In the case of companies that do not have a Cloud department, 60% stated that they do not use Cloud services, 33% have outsourced or will outsource this service, and 7% of respondents already plan to recruit specialists in this field. The role of such a specialist is complex and related to issues such as application management, data migration, cost optimization or securing access to applications.
Concerning the types of Cloud services used, in terms of Public Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are in the top ranked by the respondents, while Oracle Infrastructure Cloud, IBM Public Cloud and Alibaba Cloud are almost unknown to the Romanian public. 49% of companies with a dedicated department prefer to use hybrid cloud services. These require the organization to host essential applications and data on its own servers, the secondary ones being hosted by the Cloud provider.
In terms of Private Cloud services, Amazon Web Services Outpost, Microsoft Azure Stack, VMware vSphere are the best known among Romanian respondents, while Google Anthos, Open Stack, Red Hat OpenShift, CloudStack, Bare-metal Cloud, Pivotal CloudFoundry are extremely little known. Most companies continue to keep their data on their own servers and do not use Private Cloud services.
For the majority of the respondents, the plans for 2021 regarding the use of Cloud services are related to cost optimization, 71% indicating this aspect. Outsourcing solutions can be an explanation in this regard, as it will lead to a decrease in the budget allocated to resources and infrastructure. Also, 62% of the respondents plan to test the Cloud technology in their own company and 78% plan to analyze more extensively the existing Cloud services on the market.
In terms of learning and training plans for IT team members, in the case of companies that do not use Cloud, 78% do not consider such a plan in the near future. This can mean either they focus on hiring specialists already trained in the Cloud field, or they consider to fully outsource the Cloud services.
85% of respondents from companies that use Cloud and take into consideration the implementation of a learning plan, mentioned that using knowledge transfer from employee to employee is the most popular way to learn. At the same time, 76% of companies use also tutorials, 59% use online learning platforms such as Udemy and 56% attend official learning courses such as those offered by Amazon Web Services. In terms of the total budget for Cloud projects, 35% of companies with a learning plan allocate 5% or less to the education and training of employees.
Regarding the three most important risks for companies considering a learning plan for their IT team members, 23% see cybersecurity as the main issue, followed by the fact that organizations are still in a shortage of security resources and staff capable of responding to cyber threats. In the context of the pandemic and remote work, more and more organizations have been attacked or are in danger of being attacked.
“Following the research, our general interpretation is that there is interest in the development of the Cloud area, both as an adoption and as part of employee growth. Considering the share of companies that are already investing or want to invest in this field, we are still at the beginning of the road, skepticism among them is still high, many still not realizing the benefits that Cloud can bring in conducting their activity better. For IT companies, but also for any other organization that wants to use modern technologies as a competitive advantage, the Cloud is a valuable resource, even if for the time being it is too little accessed in our country,” added Irina Margescu, Cloud Business Enabler at Dendrio.
The study “Dendrio & AWS – Adoption of Cloud solutions in Romanian companies” was conducted between June and July 2021, data collection being performed by Mercury Research. During the study were interviewed 152 respondents from companies present in 38 counties of Romania, which operate in a variety of industries and have different sizes, starting from 0 to 50 and up to over 500 employees. The vast majority of companies, 35, are active in commerce, 28 in production, 27 in services and 20 in construction. In terms of turnover, most of them, 37%, had revenues between 1 and 4.9 million lei in 2020, 23% between 10-49 million lei, 17% between 5-9.9 million lei, 12% under 1 million lei, 6% between 50 and 100 million lei and 5% over 100 million lei. In terms of interviewees, 52% are CEOs, administrators, entrepreneurs or founders, 38% hold positions such as CFO, Chief Financial Officer or Chief Operating Officer, while 10% have the position of CTO, CIO, IT Manager, IT Department Director, IT Manager.