Technology is not an obstacle to industry-wide adoption of cloud-based object storage. One of the main factors is corporate culture. For executives, transforming data into collective awareness is essential to efficient and successful business functioning. Adoption of cloud storage lends mobility to corporate applications and data while providing the flexibility that’s required for many of today’s operations.
Yet disorganized and ill-planned adoption of cloud services can lead to the chaos of cloud sprawl. This happens when an inadequate strategy is in place to formulate a rational cloud move. To ensure that a cloud implementation is successful and that your company delivers the business benefits addressed in its goals, a well-articulated strategy and thorough planning are required. When this occurs, businesses are able to define and update their cloud computing viewpoint and structure, creating a dynamic roadmap focused on ease of use and customer service.
What is the Professional View on Cloud Effectiveness?
IDG interviewed approximately 1,400 respondents at organizations such as Computerworld and InfoWorld at executive, technical and middle management levels while conducting an interview on cloud computing and security. Nearly 50 percent of executive level management rely upon cloud computing as a transformational business essential. 43 percent felt that cloud is essential to business continuity. 39 percent felt Cloud was a driving force in customer support and customer service.
56 percent agreed that enhanced business value with Cloud adoption provides access to critical business data and applications. They also agreed that Cloud services are a catalyst of IT innovation. 54 percent supported the conclusion that greater employee collaboration and enabling greater levels of IT agility are advantages of cloud computing.
Concerns about Complexity
As clouds grow larger, though, the challenges of applications migration and security are coming to the fore. The more applications that are included in a cloud deployment, the greater the complexity of integration, as noted in a recent survey by Saugatuck Technology. 32 percent of those surveyed responded that integration between Software as a Service (SaaS) and on-site legacy applications posed a concern only slightly behind that of security (39 percent.) The proliferating number of SaaS applications only added to complexity of the integration efforts.
With ever more businesses consolidating mobile applications and social media platforms into their Clouds, huge volumes of data are moving out from behind on-site firewalls and into the cloud. Communications and security planning and implementation have become vital aspects of SaaS. Yet management is to date severely restricted by the limitations of many of out of the box SaaS applications that offer convenience and easy usage, but which are lacking in the equally sophisticated monitoring capabilities needed to ensure in depth visibility and control over information flows and other key performance indicators. Most SaaS applications have yet to strike the delicate balance between the need for mobile apps and social media’s needs for enterprise-wide data, and secure ways to acquire that data.
Personnel and Planning will Lead the Way Out of Complexity Snarls
As relatively inexpensive and easy to use SaaS applications continue to be embraced by the users, enterprise data becomes increasingly isolated within cloud silos, greatly diminishing the value of cloud computing.
The tools exist to make the cloud the secure, easily accessed, seamless repository of information for which it was intended. The greatest obstacle to achieving this isn’t technology, but a corporate culture unsupportive of careful planning and a coordinated selection and deployment of resources. Man, not machine, remains the greatest obstacle to cloud integration.
