Cloud: More Talk Than Action

Although everyone is talking about Cloud it appears that few are actually implementing it according to a survey by Symantec.

5,300 organisations in 38 countries responded on how they were adopting Cloud computing, including SaaS and PaaS.

Over three quarters of those surveyed were discussing Cloud but less than 20% reported completed implementations in the areas the research covered, with another 25% in the implementation phase.

The top cloud services being adopted were:

• Email services
• Security management
• Web and information management security
• Virtual desktop
• Log or incident management

There was no surprise that the top concern raised about moving to the cloud was security - specifically malware, hacker-based theft and data leakage.

About half of the respondents felt their staff were not ready for transition to the Cloud. With only a minority (15-18%) confident in their staff's ability to deliver. This is due to a perceived lack of 'cloud' experience amongst their staff.

So most organisations are looking to outsourcers with 75% turning to resellers, consultants, vendor services organisations or systems integrators in the deployment of hybrid infrastructure or PaaS.

So whilst there is plenty of talk about the cloud, there is still a way to go before there is an equal amount of implementation. But with most companies set to greatly increase their investment in Cloud in 2012, we are certainly heading in that direction

Sources: Symantecs 2011 State of Cloud Survey, Cloud Set to 'Sky Rocket' Article, Joe McKendrick October 2011