how to overcome roadblocks to cloud adoption

451 Research: how to overcome roadblocks to cloud adoption

Many enterprises are looking at cloud computing  as a tool to help them achieve economic growth and business innovation. But how can enterprises take advantage of the benefits of cloud, while mitigating the risk of moving to a new infrastructure model?

To answer this question, we commissioned 451 Research to look into cloud computing and its role in helping enterprises achieve business transformation. They came up with some really interesting results that I would like to share with you. You can also download the entire report to read right here.

hybrid cloud gaining traction

Although cloud computing is largely accepted within enterprises, the complete transition from traditional enterprise IT to a cloud-based future will take many years. 451 Research says that many enterprises are looking to ultimately move to a hybrid cloud model, and that the first step of this journey is to deploy a private cloud.

It found that between 2013 and 2015, enterprise private cloud deployments will rise from 19% to 30%. And in the same timeframe, hybrid cloud deployments will rise from 10% to 25%. The shift is reflected in the share of non-cloud infrastructure use going down from 62% to 41%. Public cloud is proving less popular in enterprises with public cloud services other than SaaS only rising from 1% to 6%.

security concerns focus on data security

It comes as no surprise that security continues to be the major pain point for enterprises for the cloud, with 37% of enterprises identifying it as a delivery challenge. However, delving deeper into these concerns, the major issues that enterprises are looking to solve are data privacy and security, data locality, access to data, control of data and regulatory compliance.

cloud inhibited by non-IT roadblocks

Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest roadblocks facing the enterprise IT department in their journey to cloud computing are not technology related, they are primarily cultural and organizational. In the second half of 2013, 70% of respondents to the 451 Research identified non-IT roadblocks compared to 19% who identified IT roadblocks as the primary factor. The latter is about the same as the 18% of enterprises who said there were no roadblocks at all.

In detail, resistance to change was by far the largest roadblock the research found. It increased massively from 11% to 25% just over the course of 2013 (1H vs 2H). Other significant non-IT roadblocks in 2H 2013 were vendor selection (14%), people & time (14%) and budget (11%).

moving forward

451 Research identifies three actions that enterprises should consider when looking to advance their cloud computing and business transformation plans. They are:

1. find a stable provider: they need to be in the market for the long haul to minimize the level of risk of implementing cloud services.

2. ask for assurance of service quality and transparency of cost: Ask vendors to provide tools to measure quality of service, increase transparency of costs and performance and to make a realistic evaluation of business value.

3. look for a strategic partner: Engage vendors in educational, change management and consulting activities to gain value beyond core offerings and achieve a smoother transition to the cloud.

You can read the report in full and we have also produced an infographic that visually captures the messages from the report.

Does this research chime with your experiences with cloud computing? Are you looking towards hybrid cloud to transform your enterprise IT, and how are you overcoming any roadblocks in your path?