Posted Monday, February 8th, 2010
“(The Hosting News) – Mimecast® today announced the results of its Cloud Computing Adoption Survey, which examined the perception and adoption of cloud computing solutions among 565 respondents responsible for managing their organization’s IT operations and budget across the U.S. and Canada in the Fall of 2009.
Data from the recently completed online survey highlights the complex, often contrasting, thought process of IT decision makers regarding cloud computing. While security and integration issues are clearly users’ biggest fears about cloud computing, these concerns have not dissuaded companies from implementing cloud-based applications within their corporate infrastructure. The well-known fears with cloud computing appear to be at odds with reality, as the survey findings suggest strong satisfaction with cloud computing once it is installed. 70 percent of IT decision makers already using cloud computing are planning to move additional solutions to the cloud—most within the next 12 months—indicating that those respondents have come to quickly recognize the inherent ease of implementation, robust security features and cost-savings of cloud computing.
Survey Results
Those That Have Used Cloud-Based Services are Coming Back for More
• 70 percent of companies already using cloud computing solutions are planning on moving additional applications to the cloud—and a majority of them are looking to do so in the next 12 months. This shows that respondents that have used cloud-based solutions have seen their business and operational value and want to expand that success to other application areas.
Companies’ Cloud Fears are Waning…
• 62 percent of all respondents have considered or are considering cloud computing.
• When asked what would change their minds about cloud computing, respondents ranked more mature solutions and better integration with existing systems as their top two needs (33 percent for maturity, 32 percent for integration).
… but Security Concerns and Existing Investments Remain Biggest Roadblocks to Further Adoption
• Companies remain hesitant because of perceived security issues. The findings show that security concerns were the leading reason given by respondents in all categories for not moving forward with cloud-based applications. 46 percent of respondents that had considered cloud-based applications chose security as the main reason for not moving forward. This was also true across a majority of industries, including financial services (76 percent), energy (75 percent), government (67 percent), retail (61 percent) and technology (40 percent).
• The investments made in current IT infrastructure and worries about integration also prevented companies from taking the next step toward cloud computing. 32 percent of respondents that had considered cloud-based applications named existing infrastructure investments as the reason for not moving to the cloud; while 26 percent said that legacy/integration worries had stopped them from going any further. Between the time and effort spent building their current infrastructure and fears around integrating existing systems into the cloud, respondents and their companies have been afraid to abandon what they know for what they don’t.
• Cost also continued to be a concern for those considering cloud computing, especially among government (67 percent), healthcare (52 percent) and legal (40 percent) respondents. This may have more to do with this year’s decreased IT budgets than the expense of cloud services.
• However, of those that have already implemented the cloud, 81 percent of legal, 77 percent of retail, 75 percent of government, 74 percent of technology, 72 percent of healthcare and 68 percent of financial services respondents were planning on moving additional applications to it in the future—showing that these fears can be overcome.
Certain Industries are Moving Faster than Others
• The top three industries adopting cloud computing solutions…”
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