Study Reveals Cloud May be too Risky, Cites Other Barriers Toward Adoption

Despite the hype around cloud computing and the promises it offers, some IT decision makers say the challenges related to the migration from on-premise computing make it a risky prospect for businesses.

Over 50 percent of senior IT professionals polled said that cloud is too risky and only suitable for commodity applications such as CRM or email, according to a survey conducted by social network Wisegate.

The Austin-based start-up, a self-proclaimed “anti-social” social network for senior IT professionals, recently released its results of a recent survey around cloud computing trends, which ultimately revealed the promises of cloud are more hype than reality.

“Although cloud computing has been hyped as a silver bullet solution by vendors and others benefitting from the craze, barriers to adoption exist and the findings of Wisegate’s latest report represent a storehouse of ‘in the trenches’ insights from IT leaders,” said Sara Gates, founder and CEO of Wisegate.

The survey further revealed that since cloud computing emerged in 2008 as the technology that would revolutionize the IT industry and how IT professionals do their jobs, an abundance of cloud vendors have touted their products and the benefits they afford, “drowning the market in a downpour of noise and unproven claims.”

One anonymous Wisegate member from a large government agency shot down the hype of cloud-based applications saying, “Even with Software-as-a-Service, we’ve had lots of stumbles early on. In particular, not having an identity management federation strategy in place has proven to be a pain point.”

In other survey findings, when asked if they were moving protected class data into the public cloud, 53 percent of senior IT practitioners said that the “cloud was too risky and they have no near term plans to adopt cloud for such applications.”

Other Wisegate members reported that government or industry regulations (such as HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley) prevent them from adopting cloud-based applications. Only 16 percent responded that they were moving ahead with plans but emphasized they would need a comprehensive contract and an SLA agreement in place. The other 25 percent said their company was apprehensive about cloud computing but have some near term plans in place.

As security continues to be a stumbling block toward widespread adoption of cloud, Wisegate confirmed this overall sentiment with its poll revealing that security remains the top concern for cloud adoption. However, for those organizations that are putting applications like email, in the cloud, there are a couple of keys for doing so including: [1] Ensuring that SLA agreements cover connectivity, response time, uptime and issue resolution, [2] Knowing what the maximum “send” and “receive” limits are for each mailbox and for the entire organization, and [3] Understanding the disaster recovery (DR) and digital archiving processes offered by the chosen service provider.

To access the cloud computing survey results and cloud success tips from veteran IT pros, you can request a copy of Wisegate’s NEW report titled, “A CIO’s Cloud Decision and 7 lessons Learned from Peers” at http://www.wisegateit.com/resources/downloads-cloud-apps-report.