Delayed digital transformation in Europe
2 min read
The digital transformation in Europe is still far from complete.
This is revealed in Zscaler’s EMEA 2020 Report on the state of digital transformation in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which is designed to provide an overview of the digital transformation process for companies.
In particular, it found that only one-third of European companies believe they have a secure remote access infrastructure, while 29 per cent struggle to provide a secure infrastructure.
One-third of employees using secure methods access their business applications via RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), while 30% use VPN solutions. However, the more modern solutions, such as Zero Trust or identity and access management, are less popular, used by only 19% and 17% of employees respectively.
Digital transformation accelerated by Covid
Despite this, one-third of companies say the global health crisis has accelerated their migration to the cloud, while almost half of respondents think that the number of people working remotely will grow by a further 25-50% over the next year.
Two-thirds of European businesses now use business applications in the cloud, with Italy leading (53%) for companies that have already moved more than half of their applications to the cloud, followed by the UK (50%), Germany and France (both 45%).
In addition, nearly half of respondents said they operate in a multi-cloud environment, with more than one cloud service provider, while only 13% use a single provider.
One-third of companies said they have at least three providers, with Sweden leading with 52%, followed by the Netherlands (42%) and the UK (30%). In Italy and Germany, the majority operate with two cloud service providers.
Security remains the main obstacle to digital transformation, with 42% of Europeans surveyed reporting problems in this area. This is followed by costs and lack of internal expertise, and excessive complexity.
Vice President EMEA & APAC of Zscaler, Ismail Elmas, said:
“Businesses are waking up to the benefits of the cloud, both for business agility and workforce flexibility. However, the challenges they point to imply that they are not transforming fast enough. The struggle with multi-cloud set-ups, complexity and security are the same as they’ve always been but require a new vision with regards to modern network infrastructures. The fact so many enterprises are still combining their cloud infrastructure with traditional remote desktop and VPN solutions will not effectively address these challenges. With remote working likely to be the standard in current work environments for the near future at least, businesses need to look to more secure methods of securing their employees and offer user-friendly and performant access”.
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