Research
300 CIOs express their views about barriers to cloud adoption.
The Growing Pains in the Cloud study, examines how existing legacy systems create complexity when CIOs are looking to move to the cloud and what requirements have to be put in place to ensure migration runs smoothly. To receive a full copy of the report and find out where you sit on the CIO spectrum of adoption please visit: http://growingpainsinthecloud.com/
Bob Welton, Regional Director Northern Europe, NTT Communications in Europe, discusses when the time is right for businesses to move to the cloud
It is clear that a growing number of CIOs are turning to the cloud to help gain a competitive edge for as well as looking for new and innovative ways to cut costs. A recent study by KPMGreveals that the use of cloud is genuinely dominating boardroom planning for 2013, with 42 per cent of UK organisations revealing that at least one-fifth of their total IT spend in the next 12 months will focus on cloud services. However while the business benefits of moving to the cloud may be clear, deciding when and how to implement a cloud strategy still remains a complex challenge for some.
By Bob Welton, Regional Director Northern Europe
From natural disasters to the threat of security breaches, there are no shortage of pressures to the operation of global business networks and their support systems. No pressure was greater in 2011, during the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami which caused widespread disruption to power supplies and network connectivity. This triggered companies to rethink their traditional disaster recovery strategies. Approximately 990 exchange buildings were left without power, 16 trunk lines were severed and 1.5 million cable lines were destroyed, causing major disruption to many businesses, totalling more than ￡153 billion, ($235 billion). As companies scrambled to recuperate, cloud computing became a hot topic and its services even more relevant; not only as a basic business requirement but for provisioning should a disaster occur.
Today's IT leaders have to balance the often-competing demands of delivering greater flexibility, availability and responsiveness to change, with the need to manage costs. To that end, trends and technologies such as cloud computing and understanding the value of big data are becoming more prevalent.
Providers have long championed the benefits of the cloud as a tool for business growth and now the commercial sector is starting to recognize this, as one quarter of IT and Data Managers recently surveyed by Unisphere Research confirmed they are using public cloud services in an enterprise capacity
The cloud is providing businesses with a way of outsourcing their ICT estate and acquiring new tools and technologies quickly and easily. Most cloud environments make it possible to fund ICT on a monthly basis. However, while the benefits may be clear, deciding when to adopt the cloud computing model is an issue facing many businesses.
It is clear that a growing number of CIOs are turning to the cloud to help gain a competitive edge for their business as well as looking for new and innovative ways to cut costs. A recent study by KPMG [1]reveals that the use of cloud is genuinely dominating boardroom planning for 2013, with 42 per cent of UK organisations revealing that at least one-fifth of their total IT spend in the next 12 months will focus on cloud services. However while the business benefits of moving to the cloud may be clear, deciding when and how to implement a cloud strategy still remains a complex challenge for some.