Cloud Computing Views from Europe

A recent research study from IDG stated that business IT solutions in Europe should have the agility in providing its end-users the powerful forward motion through cloud computing. The study surveyed 600 IT mangers as their respondents, and out the 600, 90% agreed that the cloud clearly provides the means to access services in a timely and self-managed virtual platforms. 60% of the respondents said they will make adjustments to the current budget to accommodate transition applications for the cloud.

Enterprise Hybrid Clouds

The study revealed that both private and public clouds are getting ready for the enterprise hybrid cloud. This is to accommodate the lacking features from the present cloud infrastructure; public clouds lack the scalability and security while private clouds have limited scalability and utilization levels. One of the advantages of the enterprise hybrid clouds that the other platforms would benefit from are the features needed for the transition from the private and public clouds, scalable resource allocation ability, security options for the enterprise level and resource management facilities for the internal and external environments.

European Standpoint

Leaders in the IT industry from Europe have identified agility as their main point for entering the cloud. 77% of CIO’s say agility is their top priority while only 44% prefer reduction of IT investment. These figures are particularly seen in UK and France.

In the global market however, the primary concern is on security. CIO’s from Germany and France said they would only move to the cloud if they are assured that security will be the same if not better than the internal environment. Next of their concerns are data recovery issues, virtualization performance and compliance.

All the respondents agreed that other than critical issues, they also believe that education and training for the IT team should be on top of the list, which is decisive for the company’s cloud adoption.

Cloud Computing Business Case

Generally European IT, particularly German CIO leaders have a high confidence that the cloud vendors will meet their key requirements for their business cases. Most of them are pleased with the open standards, an open source feature with its security level and quality of service.

Interestingly, it seems that European IT leaders have a general positive view of current vendors’ abilities to meet a number of their key requirements and would fulfill the promises they made for their business cases. The majority is pleased with open standards, an open source capability as well as vendors’ business-level quality of service and business-level security. German CIOs tend to have the most positive opinion of vendors among the respondents.

Improving Strategic Value

Overall, the study revealed that cloud adoption is widely accepted and fast expanding in its key strategic value for businesses. 87% of the respondents agreed that cloud computing is of high priority and critical in any business for the next 18 months. The enterprise hybrid cloud will pave the way for the most diverse and strategic organization and will move forward in business due to the increased performance, enhanced security and quality customer service that cloud computing can provide.