Cloud reality not meeting the hype

It’s been the hot topic of the IT industry for well over a year, but early indications suggest the hype over cloud computing may not be completely warranted.

Symantec recently commissioned a survey of 5300 organisations in 38 countries – including around 150 in New Zealand – and found a big shortfall between the anticipated benefits and those seen on implementation.

In New Zealand, 95% of organisations expected cloud computing to improve their IT agility, but only 31% said it actually did. Results were also short in disaster recovery, efficiency, security, and cost.

However, Sean Kopelke, director of Symantec’s Data Loss Prevention group across APAC and Japan, says the figures don’t mean cloud computing is completely falling short.

For starters, the disparity in the New Zealand figures  is a lot higher than for other countries, where expectation rates are around 80% and satisfaction 50%, Kopelke says.

"A lot of organisations also simply haven’t completed a lot of full cloud deployments inside their companies,” Kopelke says.

"They haven’t got over the finish line yet, so their expectations aren’t based on previous experience.”

Indeed, the study found only 15% of New Zealand companies had completed an implementation in each of the cloud areas covered by the research.

"In some cases, there is a very easy goal straight away, so for example with messaging security we can go into an organisation and come up with a dollar figure so when [the company] looks at their operational expenses they can see they’re meeting that goal.

"When you start talking about IaaS for example there may be a reduction in operational expenses but it’s not going to be seen for some time.”

The study also found that almost half of respondents felt their staff were unready for the transition to the cloud, while only around 10% rated their staff as ‘extremely prepared’.

Kopelke says this is understandable, given how few organisations have cloud experience.

"This is where the value proposition of dealing with partners comes in. People don’t need the expertise – that’s the reason they go to the cloud.”

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