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Many businesses 'remain wary of cloud investments'
IT News |
21/01/2011
A new report has highlighted a number of potential barriers to businesses' adoption of cloud computing services.
Research conducted by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) revealed that high levels of investment in legacy technology are a major constraint for many firms.
Some 35 per cent of IT executives surveyed said they were dissuaded from embracing cloud services because of the amount of capital they had already invested in their in-house IT infrastructure.
This was the third most common reason for a failure to move to the cloud, after security and privacy concerns, while interviewees cited existing outsourcing agreements as a further constraint.
As many as 93 per cent of respondents said that some aspect of their IT function had been delegated to an external service provider.
But despite this, ISACA found that 40 per cent of respondents are actively pursuing, or have already made, cloud investments.
Where the challenge appears to lie is in convincing others of future cost benefits of revamping their IT delivery model.
Ken Vander Wal, international vice-president of ISACA, commented that emerging technologies such as cloud computing and outsourcing can be managed effectively by integrating good governance over IT.
"Organisations need to adopt new service delivery models to stay competitive," he argued.
"Assessing the value of current investments, building consensus among stakeholders and mitigating risk with third-party providers all require a comprehensive governance framework for organisations to be sure they are doing the right things and doing things right."
Michael Dean, head of marketing at the National Computer Centre, recently claimed that business leaders are taking their time before fully committing to cloud computing investments.
He said that many decision makers recognise the benefits of internet-delivered IT solutions, but prefer to trial the technology before embarking on wholesale change of their technology infrastructure.
"There is a lot of hype around cloud computing, and it certainly is going to transform the way that IT is provisioned in organisations, without a shadow of a doubt," Mr Dean said.
"But where we are at the moment is that there's actually a very small amount of organisations doing cloud properly."
Posted by Stephen Wilkinson
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