Forty per cent of global respondents are now accelerating their move to the cloud, with 51% planning to move more applications to the cloud to prepare for future Covid-19 shutdowns.

MariaDB Corporation has announced the results of a new global survey that looked at the initial Covid-19 impact on businesses moving to the cloud and IT professionals’ attitudes on what has changed – and what they think will change.

Nearly all (99%) respondents worldwide (UK, US, Germany and France) indicated an impact on their business today related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The situation only slightly improves in 2021, with 84% of all respondents expecting a continued impact.

In the UK specifically, more than three quarters (78%) of respondents expect there to be new challenges because of a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, with nearly half (49%) planning to move more applications to the cloud to prepare for it.

MariaDB is one the top five most used databases globally, with availability on all of the leading cloud platforms and 75% of Fortune 500 companies running it. With this position in the marketplace, MariaDB is uniquely able to bring a global perspective on technology trends facing businesses worldwide. 

The goal with issuing the survey was to identify and put meaningful cloud adoption statistics to trends the company noticed with regard to Covid-19’s impact on IT operations, such as increased interest in cloud databases like MariaDB SkySQL, in-person events, outlook on the future and more.

Beyond the hard business numbers, the survey also looked at the “human” impact of current and future changes.

Cloud adoption accelerating for some, slowing for others

The impact on businesses’ cloud adoption plans, with more than a third (39%) of UK respondents currently accelerating their move to the cloud, has led to increases across a range of related decisions as companies prepare for future Covid-related shutdowns. When asked to select all that apply, the top choices on this topic in the UK were:

• 49% are planning to move more applications to the cloud
• 31% expect to be 100% in the cloud
• 18% are starting a move to the cloud.

On the flip side, 12% of UK respondents said they are slowing down their move to the cloud because of Covid-19’s impact, compared to 36% in the US.

Forever WFH

With 78% of UK respondents expecting new challenges because of a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, technologists are implementing a variety of technology changes to prepare for future shutdowns.

The two main strategies being implemented in the UK (when respondents were asked to choose all that apply) are implementing “forever” work-from-home (WFH) strategies (59%) and setting up remote access for all employees (54%).

In-person technology events… See you next year

One of the early consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic was the cancellation of in-person corporate and technology events. Despite more than two thirds (67%) of UK respondents stating that they miss these in-person events, the overwhelming majority (86%) also said they will attend fewer in-person events or only attend online events in the future as a result of Covid-19. 

“The survey data surfaces trends we have been seeing with our MariaDB SkySQL cloud database business over the last few months, such as the increased movement to the cloud due to COVID-19’s global impact,” said Franz Aman, CMO, MariaDB Corporation.

“By default, cloud infrastructure is designed and secured for access from anywhere, no need to enable or figure out remote working, that is the native lifestyle. Companies realise that many structural changes are here to stay and future disruptions – be it another pandemic or an entirely different disaster – need to be anticipated and planned for.

“The outcome is an acceleration to the cloud for mission-critical applications, and the cloud databases and analytics they rely on. An enterprise-grade DBaaS becomes the foundation for any crisis-resistant, essential enterprise application.”