It probably comes as no surprise that companies that are killing it in the cloud are more disciplined, strategic and accountable than those that aren’t. Now there’s a survey to prove it.

The study of 550 senior managers at midsized and large organizations who are involved in cloud operations finds that cloud “leaders” – those that are seeing the best results from their cloud deployments – have far better visibility into their cloud operations and a better understanding of workloads running in the cloud than those who are less accomplished.

Cloud leaders are also nearly unanimous in having clearly defined roles and responsibilities for managing cloud infrastructure and conducting cloud availability planning, putting them far ahead of cloud “laggards.” The survey, released Wednesday, was jointly conducted by CloudHealth Technologies Inc. and the Cloud Technology Partners Inc. unit of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

The survey also found that nearly all cloud leaders see the cloud as fueling revenue growth and creating competitive advantage. On average, they attribute a 51 percent year-over-year improvement in top-line revenue to their cloud investments.

In contrast, the organizations researchers identified as laggards struggle with visibility, control and measurement. Although 72 percent of leaders believe their cloud deployment is either moderately or fully automated, only 31 percent of laggards say that. Just 46 percent of laggards have reference architectures that define how their cloud deployments comply with enterprise standards, compared with 90 percent of leaders.

The vision thing

Ninety-five percent of leaders report that they have a vision for cloud deployment along with the discipline necessary to make that vision a reality. That contrasts with just 62 percent of laggards who say that. By nearly similar margins, leaders also outshine laggards in their ability to understand workloads, calculate costs, plan availability and maintain transparency.

Laggards typically struggle in a handful of areas, researchers said. They’re poorly equipped to take advantage of different cloud pricing plans and options, and also less adept at automation than their more accomplished peers. They’re also significantly less able to conduct “what if” forecasting for cloud workloads.

Leaders are nearly unanimous in agreeing that the cloud fuels revenue growth, and creates a competitive advantage for their companies. Forty-six percent say the cloud has delivered a greater than 51 percent increase in top-line revenue, compared with only 10 percent of laggards. That 51 percent revenue growth estimate is also up sharply from the 35 percent leaders reported in last year’s study.

Leaders are far more adept at identifying and mitigating risk as well, despite the fact that they are slightly more likely than laggards to believe that their brand is exposed to risk as a result of cloud projects. Researchers suggested that this is thanks to their keener awareness of their cloud operations, a fact that causes them to be more realistic about risks.

Reiterating a recommendation from last year’s study, the sponsors recommend that organizations assign a “cloud steward” who has intimate knowledge of the technology and how it affects the business. They further suggest using strict metrics to track performance over time, budget and allocate monthly spending by business group and amortize costs for accountability. Finally, they advise centralizing governance while decentralizing management and automating as much as possible.

Image: Flickr CC