Growth businesses are always looking for flexible ways of working that reduce capital and running costs, while securely delivering the data users need, when and where they need it. This is why cloud storage is taking off. With cloud's clear cost and agility benefits, will remaining concerns around security dissipate more quickly, and will businesses stop hesitating and make their move?
Moving data outside the traditional secure perimeter into a third-party network understandably demands trust between customer and cloud provider. The cloud represents a fundamental shift in IT service delivery. But will security concerns keep businesses tethered for long? A combination of expertise and stakeholder engagement will satisfy requirements and concerns before identifying suitable technologies and providers to ensure services remain thoroughly protected. Cloud governance, readiness and security assessment steps all add peace of mind during the move and speed things up considerably.
To gauge opinions for ourselves, we recently conducted 700 interviews with cross-sector organizations of 500 employees or more in seven separate global regions. We wanted to know how much cloud is already out there, what benefits were experienced, and how widespread cloud adoption was. All but 14 percent of organizations we spoke to are already using cloud, suggesting that it is more enthusiastically embraced in multiple sectors around the globe than some observers predicted.
I believe the cloud proposition is now mature, and that any wariness over perceived risk is dissipating as benefits become more established. Forward-thinking organizations that give their IT departments the time, space and autonomy to investigate new technologies are now ahead of the curve, and already reaping benefits that many of their competitors are still targeting.
