Performance concerns (stability, response time, end-to-end availability) are the biggest inhibitors to adoption of cloud services by enterprises, primary research conducted by Alcatel-Lucent suggests.
That might sound familiar. Identical concerns were raised about IP telephony. Over time, those concerns were sufficiently addressed, in part by service provider enhancements, in part by continued developments in the underlying software, hardware and deployment practices.
There seems little issue but that the concerns about cloud computing will be addressed, as well.
Information technology decision makers reported that performance was the most important aspect of cloud solutions needing improvement. Other top concerns are security, cost and ease of use. All of those are logical and expected concerns that suppliers will have to address.
The study included input from 3,886 IT decision makers at medium- and large-sized multinational technology firms in seven countries, including the United States., United Kingdom, France, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Some 66 percent of IT decision makers don’t use the cloud for their essential business applications for fear of service outages.
Of enterprises familiar with cloud services, about 46 percent of respondents find current cloud service system delays unacceptable. Some 25 percent said remedies when service level agreements (SLAs) are not met are an issue.
Also, 40 percent reported either frequent or lengthy service outages.
The reluctance to embrace the cloud was highest in finance, insurance, healthcare and government sectors where performance and security are essential requirements for applications and services.
Nonetheless, 44 percent of the IT departments surveyed are optimistic that the weaknesses in today’s cloud services will be resolved and expect to expand the use of cloud services over the next three years.
None of that would surprise veterans of the IP telephony business.
