No business can avoid “the cloud.” Some embrace cloud based services with enthusiasm as a formal way of delivering all or part of a given organization’s IT requirements, whilst others grudgingly accept them because it is near impossible to stop individual users or lines of business from building them in to business processes.
A recent Quocirca research report – “The adoption of cloud based services” – exposed some striking differences between those with attitudes that lie at these two ends of the spectrum with regard to attitude to cloud based services. The research identified four main groupings ranging from “enthusiasts” who belief they should use cloud services whenever possible (22% of the sample), through to “avoiders” that make little use of them (23%).
An analysis of the enthusiasts versus avoiders shows that the latter lack confidence in their ability to secure the use of cloud services rather than dismissing them outright as a way to deliver their IT requirements. To overcome these concerns they need to take a leaf out of the enthusiasts’ book.
Enthusiasts are far more likely to have put various security measures in place that better facilitate the use for cloud services. For example, 97% of enthusiasts have an identity and access management (IAM) system in place compared to just 26% of avoiders. Interestingly, this is also more likely than not to be a cloud base IAM service; cloud feeds on cloud!
The net result of all this is that cloud enthusiasts spend a higher proportion of their overall IT budget on security. This reflects two things, first the need just outlined to invest in security to overcome the concerns about using cloud services, and second, the use of cloud services will bring down top line IT costs anyway.
Organizations that have the confidence to make widespread use of cloud services will find their IT costs will drop and their businesses will become more competitive as their IT staff focus on application delivery rather than infrastructure management. The ultimate message, upgrade your security and join the party. In reality there is little choice, even if IT management does not embrace the cloud, your users and the broader business will.