Study: Non-IT Roadblocks Slowing Enterprise Cloud Adoption

451-cloud-470

Click image for a larger version of the graphic.

An increase in non-IT roadblocks is slowing the pace of enterprise IT cloud project completion, according to a report from the 451 Research service TheInfoPro. While the report projects explosive growth in the number of enterprise cloud computing projects, 83 percent of respondents are facing significant roadblocks to deploying their cloud initiatives, a 9 percent increase since the end of 2012. It is people, processes, politics, and other organizational issues standing in the way rather than IT roadblocks.

IT roadblocks have actually declined to 15 percent, while non-IT roadblocks have increased to 68 percent of the sample.

“As organizations are completing their transition to a virtualized datacenter infrastructure, their focus is switching rapidly to cloud computing projects,” said Peter ffoulkes, TheInfoPro's Research Director for Cloud Computing. “Despite this shift of attention and the associated growth opportunity, there are major roadblocks – for the most part, they are not technology related and fall within the domain of people, process, policy and organizational issues, which are more complex for vendors to address.”

While the report projects explosive growth in the number of enterprise cloud computing projects, 83 percent of respondents are facing significant roadblocks to deploying their cloud initiatives, a 9 percent increase since the end of 2012. It is people, processes, politics, and other organizational issues standing in the way rather than IT roadblocks.

Sixty percent of respondents view cloud computing as a natural evolution of IT service delivery, and do not allocate separate budgets for cloud computing. Of those who separate out cloud budgets, 69 percent anticipate spending to increase in both 2013 and 2014 compared to the year prior.

Microsoft, VMware and Amazon.com lead the list of exciting vendors and technologies, followed by OpenStack, which looks poised to challenge the existing status quo as the enterprise cloud market develops.

TheInfoPro uses a “Heat Index” to show what’s hot, and cloud platform/orchestration stacks are at the top of the list. This is followed by cloud performance management/monitoring and virtual pricate cloud-based IaaS as the top greenfield opportunities with the biggest upside for vendors in the next two years.

Security remains the biggest pain point in cloud implementation. Regulatory and compliance issues are ‘pass/fail’ criteria for public cloud provider selection.

ffoulkes will discuss the report findings during a webinar on Sept. 17.