• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, April 9, 2018

Enterprise marketers tend to resist the cloud when loading data to drive into emails — largely because of the cost, says Roger Barnette, CEO of MessageGears. Maybe so. But cloud adoption is booming, especially among sales and marketing teams that rely on it for business intelligence — i.e., analytics — according to the 2018 Cloud Computing and Business Intelligence Market Study, a report from Dresner Advisory Services as reported in Forbes by Louis Columbus.

Overall, the percentage of firms using Cloud BI rose from 31% in 2016 to 49%. And the number of those with no plans to use it dropped from 38% to 19%. In seven years of surveying, “this is the one “showing the most significant rise in adopt levels ever,”  Columbus writes.

Most firms consider the cloud “an important element of their broader analytics strategies,” with sentiment rising from a mean 2.68 in 2016 to 3.22. Feelings are running  highest in Asia — at 4.2.  

Sales and marketing teams “are increasingly relying on cloud-based front office applications and services that are integrated with and generate cloud-based data to track progress toward goals,” Columbus continues. And 90% say Cloud Bi is essential for getting their work done, putting them at the top in that regard.

The features they require are dashboards, advanced visualization, ad-hoc query, data integration and self service. They need “real-time feedback on the on key initiatives, program strategies,” Columbus notes.  

These teams often have “time-constrained and revenue-driven goals where quantifying contributions to company growth and achievement are critical,” Columbus writes.

Adoption is highest in the financial services sector (62%) technology (54%) and education (54%). And it has almost doubled to half for enterprise firms.

And it seems to be paying off — two-thirds of firms that deem themselves successful use the cloud.

How do they get there? Columbus writes that “86% of Cloud BI adopters name Amazon AWS as their first choice, 82% name Microsoft Azure, 66% name Google Cloud and 36% identify IBM Bluemix as their preferred provider of cloud BI services. 

What a the biggest obstacles they face? Concerns about privacy and security.

In the email space, enterprise marketers face issues because “the process of taking some portion of this massive, complex, ever-changing set of data up to the cloud is a significantly costly, time-consuming endeavor,” Barnette says. That’s why some use hybrid email solutions like the one provided by his firm. 

All signs show that even laggards will get on board — because most of the services available to them are based in the cloud.