This week, Cap Gemini released a study about how Cloud based solutions are evolving in the BtoB market. As the Cloud is getting more and more mature, most companies are convinced by its necessity but have a “step by step’ approach to it and decide to adopt Cloud-based solutions for a certain number of reasons.
Among key findings such as Cloud decisions being made by both Business Managers (45%) and IT manager (46%), the study reveals the main reasons companies are going or not going for Cloud-based solutions.
Having a look at the charts, we see that one of the main reasons driving companies to the Cloud is money as “Reduced Cost” (52%) and “Avoid operational expenses, preserve capital” (34%) are in the top five reasons.
“Reduced time to market” (41%) came in second close to “Operational efficiencies” (39%) in the third place where the Data & storage issue “Free up data center space” is in the fourth position with 35% of answers.
Now, what make companies still defiant of moving to Cloud? This is, in my opinion, a very relevant question.
As seen on the chart, we see that the first two answers are related to Data Security. We then have in positions four and five issues specific to each company situation: “Lack of Cloud strategy” and “Lack of agility in the business”.
Let’s go back to the security issue for a moment; first of all we have the “fear of security breaches”: Is my data secured in a distant location, managed by people I don’t know? I was reading an article from PCWorld by Tony Bradley that made an interesting point on the matter:
Are my belongings better locked at my own anonymous place, with the level of security that I am able to provide with my own resources or are they better off stored in Times Square at a place where they have dedicated teams to handle security?
This is a call you have to make but your data may be better off protected by an entire department of trained people than on your own database located in your company.
Regarding the second issue related to data governance and sovereignty, this is definitively a political matter which is still unfolding as we speak. While anti-terrorism laws now allow countries such as the United States and its administration to have access to any data stored on US based servers, and some other countries are not known to be very reliable regarding data privacy (China etc.), the risk of facing a potential leak in the case of industrial espionage is to be considered.
Actually, to increase the protection of their national data and administration, some countries such as France are building their own Cloud which will follow their own law & regulations, preventing espionage and insuring the sovereignty of their data.
Even if those issues need to be addressed seriously, i still think the potential and agility that Cloud based solutions give us outweigh the drawbacks, with the explosion of mobile devices and mobile solutions, not taking this train means you could wait for a very long time alone on the platform before the next opportunity.