British CIOs express concerns over cloud computing deployment

There's one group of people who seem not to be buying into the drive towards cloud - the country's CIOs,

While it might be surprising that the UK's top techies would be among the most reluctant to go down this route, according to two new surveys, CIOs in the UK are united in their belief that cloud services have been over-hyped and that some serious concerns are being ignored in the rush to move to cloud computing.

The two surveys, coincidentally released one the same day by SunGard and Colt, on the same day cover the same area – although their conclusions are somewhat different.

Of the two surveys, SunGard’s is much more strident in tone, warning that 85 percent of CIOs believe that cloud is over-hyped and that, far from being a major transitional shift, three-quarters of CIO viewed the move to cloud as being  no different from ay other IT project.

The Colt survey is a bit more measured but, while there is not the talk of over-hyping,  there are still serious concerns about the cloud.  Almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of CIOs believe that the  business risks associated  with moving from on-premise IT  to a cloud-based structure could potentially damage a company’s reputation and affect customer relations.  As in many of these surveys, the main concern is with security - 42 per cent of survey respondents see the main risk arising from performance issues or security incidents, while 45 per cent view compromises in security as the biggest risk.

However, the CIOs surveyed by Colt seem to be far more willing to adopt cloud than their counterparts in the SunGard survey. According to Colt, although only 16 percent of responding companies have already adopted cloud, most companies believe that cloud will be their primary technology by 2014, 60 percent of respondents holding this view.

There are differing views over the main challenges awaiting companies undertaking this move to the cloud. Fifty eight percent of respondents thought that ease of transition would be the key challenge but quality assurance, cost justificationand regulation on security and control of customer data were also rated as major concerns.