There are currently about 50 million enterprise users of cloud office systems, which represent only 8% of overall office system users, excluding China and India.
A report by Gartner however predicted that a major shift toward cloud office systems will begin by the first half of 2015 and reach 33 % penetration by 2017.
“Despite the hype surrounding migration to the cloud, big differences in movement rates continue, depending on organizations' size, industry, geography and specific requirements,” Tom Austin, VP at Gartner, said. “While 8% of business people were using cloud office systems at the start of 2013, we estimate this number will grow to 695 million users by 2022, to represent 60%.”
Although email remains the world’s primary collaboration tool, others, such as team sites and communities are growing in importance. Nonetheless, email is typically pivotal in decisions to move — or not move — to cloud office systems. Gartner estimates that by the end of 2014 at least 10% of enterprise email seats will be based on a cloud or software-as-a-service model. This figure will rise to at least one-third by the end of 2017.
In addition, there has been a substantial expansion in the number of devices people use to access cloud office systems in recent years. In 2007, when the cloud office system market first appeared, typical individual users would employ just one device to access their enterprise's office systems. In 2013, that number has soared.
Gartner estimates the typical knowledge worker now employs up to four devices — for example, mobile phone, media tablet, personal PC and enterprise PC — to access their organization's office system capabilities in a single week. This explosion in the number of devices per user could drive some organizations to cloud office systems as they can reduce the IT burden of software installation, maintenance and upgrades of locally installed office software.