Friday, February 25, 2011

Differences in opinion over the cloud

At NetEvents in Barcelona earlier this month the safety of the cloud was once again questioned. “Trust is the Achilles heel for the cloud,” said Justin Fielder, CTO at Easynet Global Services.

Unbelievably, Fielder actually likened moving to the cloud to “signing your own death warrant,” for IT leaders. Fielder may not be alone in his criticism of the cloud as some CIOs are also cautious about testing the cloud - however, they are not questioning the benefits, rather they are worried about putting themselves or their company at risk – people do not like the unknown.

“People do not want to lose control,” said Raul Chico, head of IT at BT Spain. Maybe joining the cloud needs to be seen as TAKING control - the possibilities to cut costs are still hugely attractive – and it is a necessity to keep up with the competition. To stay in the game, companies cannot sit on the sidelines as others jump.


"People don't necessarily know what they want [from the cloud] but they know they need to reduce cost to remain competitive," said David Hill, vice-president EMEA for Spirent Communications.


"The cloud is the equivalent to Shangri-La for IT departments. It is everything they would want their IT environment to be, yet we are still waiting for it to really take off," said Sean Hackett, research director, CloudScape, The 451 Group.

At the end of the day, a ‘leap of faith’ is necessary – and the more that take such a leap, the more will follow.

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