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10 Nov 2009
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IT professionals' confusion over the definition of cloud computing could be hampering enterprise adoption, research has claimed.
Email security vendor Proofpoint quizzed 200 IT bods, nearly two-fifths of whom admitted to being "generally confused" by the term cloud computing. A third of respondents claimed the technology is more hype than substance. Less than a quarter of IT staff believe their firm's chief executive could define cloud computing.
Half of respondents felt that moving sensitive data into the cloud could contravene government data protection statutes or increase the risk of the data being compromised. Managing data in-house is considered the safer option by 43 per cent of IT pros, the survey claims.
Further reading
Almost half of those quizzed claimed deploying cloud services would engender staff perceptions that their employer was planning to reduce headcount.
Proofpoint's chief executive Gary Steele said: "Any great paradigm shift – cloud computing included – will always be accompanied by hype and a fair amount of confusion. So we are not surprised to see these percentages, even among the power users – IT professionals. There is still a significant amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding data security and financial payback issues.
“The takeaway is that clearly all clouds are not created equal. Given the increasing number of software-as-a-service email security and compliance solutions available, and differences in data security, service level agreements, effectiveness and ease of use, enterprises must conduct their due diligence when moving these types of functions to the cloud."
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What?s in a name?
While it's true there remains confusion over what the term cloud computing means, ensuring everyone reaches a consensus isn't where energy should be focused. Instead, effort should be placed on educating people in organisations about the benefits the cloud model can deliver today. A few months ago we conducted a survey of senior IT execs and architects and found 76 per cent are already using shared infrastructure or a private cloud for production enterprise apps, which is what the cloud concept is really all about: sharing. Cloud takes the value of sharing to the next level ? do more with less, and provide better service to the business while using IT assets more effectively. Companies can realize these benefits today by starting with 'private cloud', which helps address the security, reliability and management issues that most people associate with running apps in the cloud.
Posted by Martin Harris, Platform Computing | 20 Nov 2009
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