Cloud May Bring Improvements, But Now What?
A vast majority of cloud specialists within organizations using or considering cloud services see their initiatives significantly impacting one or more business processes, yet they aren't prepared to deal with those changes.
According to a recent survey conducted by The Open Group, 82 percent said their cloud initiatives will bring about such improvements to their business process, but of those, 72 percent have no idea how to adapt to those improvements.
"Cloud computing is primarily a technical phenomenon, but it has the ability to transform business," said Chris Harding, The Open Group's director for interoperability and SOA, in a blog post.
"Its lower cost and increased agility and speed of operation can dramatically improve profitability of existing business processes," he noted. "More than this, and perhaps more importantly, it enables new ways of collaborative working and can support new processes. It is therefore not surprising that people do not yet feel fully prepared -- but it is interesting that the survey should bring this point out quite so clearly."
The survey was based on an online poll of cloud specialists within global organizations ranging in size from under 200 to over 5,000 employees, The Open Group said.
The largest proportion of respondents to the survey, 43 percent, said the cloud is on their roadmap, while an additional 24 percent have only begun implementing cloud services in the past 12 months. Only 8 percent said they have no plans to implement cloud services.
The preferred model of cloud computing was hybrid, according to 45 percent of those surveyed. Twenty-nine percent favored private clouds and only 17 percent public clouds. The rest were unsure.
Cost reduction (21 percent) was the largest reason companies are using the cloud, followed by the ability to be more agile in providing new services (20 percent). Resource optimization (17 percent) was another key factor.
Among the biggest concerns about cloud computing were security (18 percent), integration issues (15 percent), governance (14 percent), the ability to cope with change (11 percent) and vendor lock-in (9 percent).
A copy of the survey is available for download.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on June 30, 2011