A global survey of IT and business executives reveals that most companies want to accelerate the pace of public cloud migration. In general, those who proceed at a faster pace are more successful at realizing the ultimate payoff.

European countries track remarkably close to the global average in a survey of IT and business executives conducted by IDG Research Services. Most notable however, the 72% of European enterprises that are moving to the cloud at a steady pace of adoption—over a time period of 12 to 36 months—are ahead of the global average of 66%. In fact, they are significantly outpacing the 58% of North American respondents in that category.

In Europe, as in North America, there is a noticeable variation between executives at higher and lower levels with regard to prioritizing cloud migration. At the vice president or higher level, 83% say their organizations are looking for ways to accelerate cloud adoption vs. just 60% at the director level. That indicates a certain lack of mission cohesion within a fair number of European companies, which tracks very closely to results in North America. In Asia Pacific, executives are almost in lockstep, with junior executives at 88% leading their superiors at 84%.

Just 11% of respondents in this region say their timetable for adoption is greater than 36 months, compared with 4% in Asia Pacific and 23% in North America. Another 17% of European companies say they are pursuing an adoption timetable of less than 12 months, right on pace with North American companies, with both trailing the 27% of Asian companies who are on the fast track.

Europeans following a cautious strategy—only migrating applications as business dictates—represent 25% of the regional total, compared with the 22% global average. Europeans who are migrating some applications represent 37%; 24% are in a mass migration mode of moving all or most applications. Some 14% are pursuing a “born in the cloud” strategy.

The global survey finds that cloud-first and mass migration organizations are ahead in achieving benefits from cloud migration within six months, which may put European enterprises at somewhat of a disadvantage to Asia Pacific companies.

The survey also reveals that as organizations pick up that pace of adoption and more fully realize the impact of clouddriven business process changes, cost savings is no longer the No. 1 driver of cloud adoption, superseded by the need for business agility.

Across the globe, among those not pursuing a “born in the cloud” or cloud-first strategy, the preferred method of cloud migration is to optimize applications to leverage cloud services, a category in which Europe leads other regions at 80%, compared with 75% in Asia Pacific, and far ahead of North America’s 54%. In addition, 27% of European respondents are choosing to “lift and shift” some applications to the cloud with minimal changes.