In March 2023, we fielded the C2C Member Pulse to observe trends, skill gaps, and challenges in Google Cloud and how our members use community to enrich their cloud experience. This infographic highlights a portion of the findings.
Understanding priorities and challenges faced by organizations using cloud technology is vital for optimizing C2C's efforts in content programming. Hearing directly from our members helps us tackle the now and the here - it's all specific to our community, not generalized based on tech hype in various news outlets.
Plus, cloud topics are big. It's crucial that we cover topics that truly meet your needs. While we may already cover data and analytics, for example, if we overlook challenges related to master data and governance that you've highlighted, we miss a valuable opportunity to support you effectively.
Areas of Focus
Based on the survey results, it's clear that cloud management, data and business analytics, automation, security, and optimizing business processes are top priorities for members this year. The overall digitization and adoption of cloud solutions are significant areas of focus, while less technical and more topical or people-oriented areas like sustainability, training, and supporting remote workforces are of lesser priority but still on the radar for some respondents.
Respondents not focused on sustainability expect to be in the next 2 to 5 years. Unless sustainability is embedded in the organization respondents work for, this focus is being pushed further down the road. For example, sustainability is important for certain industries, most often as noted by respondents in the energy and travel industries.
Organizational Challenges
When welcoming new priorities, challenges are a given. Data-related issues - such as integration, master data maintenance, and governance - are the top challenges respondents' organizations are currently experiencing. We can observe challenges aligning with focus on cloud management, data analytics, and automation. More than 30% also cite challenges with budget, internal skills to manage new products, gaining actionable insights from data analytics, and cybersecurity and data protection.
Influence Over Technology Purchases
The survey also looked into the decision-making process for technology purchases. C-level executives most often hold the responsibility for these decisions, but in other cases, IT staff and buying committees play a significant role. It's worth noting that the size of the organization influences the decision-making approach, with smaller organizations relying more on C-level roles and larger organizations involving buying committees.
Visualizing It All
Take a look at how the community ranks the options they were given for areas of focus, challenges, and who is responsible for making technology purchase decisions.
View image as a full-scale PDF here.
Get the Most of Community
As members of our community, your voices shape our initiatives. While we learned a lot about you collectively in this survey, we also want to meet your needs as an individual. Take a moment to update your profile today, and ensure you're receiving the most relevant and valuable content tailored specifically for your interests.
