More organisations ready to move mission-critical apps to the cloud

We may not be ready to put all our mission-critical apps into the cloud just yet but the idea doesn’t fill us with horror any more. That’s according to a new survey from Vanson Bourne which found that 87 percent of businesses have more trust in the cloud than they did two years ago.

What’s more, the survey, which was sponsored by Attenda, revealed large numbers of companies prepared to move mission-critical applications to the cloud  - 96 percent of transport and logistics companies were ready to move critical apps and even 72 percent of the more conservative financial organisations were prepared to take the plunge.

The survey, however, revealed that security was still a major concern for users. According to Clive Grayson, director of service strategy at Attenda, top concerns were location of data, retrieval of that data and lack of control and visibility over data. 

Grayson said the increased level of trust in cloud was very gratifying but it was a reflection of the growing move to cloud by companies. “When I first saw the results, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of trust that had increased in just a couple of years. On reflection, I’m not surprised as in most cases they’d dipped their toes in the water, having tried and tested cloud services from virtualisation providers,” he said.

However, there were concerns that businesses would be affected by an IT skills shortage. Most companies believed that the skills within cloud providers were not up to scratch when it came to handling critical application  - more than three quarters of all respondents (77 percent) thought that employees at these companies needed a different set of skills to deliver these applications.

On the other hand, the survey also revealed that the protection of organisations’ existing IT staff had fallen down the list of inhibitors.  Grayson said there had been change in mindset among CIOs and there was a recognition that cloud meant a different set of priorities with CIOs being able to concentrate on strategic planning.

However, he warned that old-fashioned view could still hold “You will always get organisations where someone wants to retain an IT empire what distinguishes a CIO is not the number of employees or size of his estate but the services that he delivers.”