Driven by a growing appetite to shift physical security systems to the cloud in order to access big data insights and meet business objectives more readily, organisations are quickly realising the importance of the cloud.

A new Pan EU survey of 1500 IT decision makers across Europe into the attitudes towards and behaviours behind cloud adoption, has provided some revelatory insight that will serve the physical security industry.

The survey, conducted by Morphean, a Video Surveillance-as-a-Service (VSaaS) innovator, highlights not only a favourable shift towards cloud but also a need to adopt technology to extract the intelligent insights needed to accelerate business growth.

Respondents from organisations with 25 employees and above from the UK, France and Germany were asked to share their views on cloud technologies, cloud security, future cloud investment and new areas of cloud growth.

The results showed that while nearly 9 out of 10 businesses surveyed are already using cloud-based software solutions, 89% of respondents would possibly or definitely move physical security technology such as video surveillance and access control to the cloud. Furthermore, 92% felt it to be important or very important that their physical security solutions meet their overall business objectives.

Residual reluctance to shift to widespread adoption of cloud in the face of growing cyber threats appears to be waning. Paradoxically, it would seem that the rise in cyber threats has led to a consensus that cloud is more agile and better prepared to face the threat of cyber-attack versus an on-premise solution.

Over a quarter (27%) reported the principal reason for moving services to the cloud was that it is safer/offers better security options – ahead of cost-effectiveness and the ability to collaborate – while 25% have experienced a data breach in the past 24 months.

As end-users continue to see the benefits of cloud solutions, adoption is forecast to rise. On average, 33% of IT budgets were spent on cloud services in the past 24 months; 78% of respondents expect their cloud spend to increase within the next two years and estimate that, on average, 47% of their internal data will be cloud processed in the next two to five years. Some of this growth is expected to be in systems that are not typically associated with cloud, such as video surveillance and access control.

Rodrigue Zbinden, CEO at Morphean stated, “This study of our market across Europe underpins what we already knew from conversations on the ground but lacked the statistical evidence to prove.”

“Fears of cyber-attack have hindered enterprise adoption of cloud in certain industries, such as the physical security sector. The attitude that ‘if we don’t own it, we can’t control it’ has perhaps persisted until now. But with more and more businesses migrating their legacy systems to proven cloud platforms for email, CRM, ERP and HR, we know that security will be the next big area of growth for a number of sound reasons.

“We now face an unpredictable future. Businesses are realising that not only is cloud technology more secure, more agile and more cost-effective than its on-premise alternative when deployed correctly by a proven partner, but the business intelligence benefits that it provides far outweigh the risks.”