Research sponsored by SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability and business continuity services, reveals a reluctance amongst the chief financial officer (CFO) community to invest in cloud technologies unless a provider can provide strong proof that customer data will be safe and always available.
Three times as many CFOs are looking for 'a solid record of resilience and protecting of a customer's data' rather than 'impressive ROI' (Return on Investment) stats when selecting a cloud provider.
The research, conducted among 100 chief financial officers (CFOs) in mid-sized UK head-quartered organisations, found that concerns around data protection and resilience are the most common factors in holding CFOs back from endorsing the entrusting of their organisation's data to third party cloud providers; only 15% admit to being happy to outsource all of their data. Financial accounting systems tops the list of applications CFOs would least want to move into the cloud or outsource (37%), compared to just 13% who are reluctant to hand over the hosting of their Web site.
Despite many organisations starting to move applications and infrastructure to cloud environments, the research also suggests that it could be some time before the majority of data centres are no longer managed in-house. Almost three-quarters of CFOs said they would like to remove data centres from their organisation's balance sheet, yet only a quarter of those surveyed think this is likely over the next five years.
Commenting on the results, Keith Tilley, managing director UK and executive vice president Europe for SunGard Availability Services, said, "Reduction in spend is often cited as a driver for moving towards the cloud but when selecting a cloud provider, it seems, right now, that guaranteeing resilience and security of data is far more important than achieving significant ROI."
"Whilst this prudence is entirely appropriate, moving your data or IT infrastructure into the cloud should not necessarily be seen as a risk," Tilley continued. "Quite the opposite - using a private cloud, managed by a trusted supplier, is an opportunity to increase the security and resilience of your data as you're entrusting it with a specialist for whom this is their onlyy concern."
Philip Howard, research director Bloor Research, commented: "Many people are not clear about the distinctly different cloud offerings. The public cloud, which has seen some issues, is different to an on-premises private cloud, which a company might operate for itself, as opposed to a hosted private cloud service such as the one that SunGard offers. This is causing confusion within businesses."
SunGard Availability Services launched its SunGard-as-a-Service offering, its fully managed 'private cloud' service in the UK in October 2009. The service draws on SunGard Availability Services' 30 year heritage in Information Availability, managed IT services, and experience of working with 10,000 customers worldwide. At the time of launch SunGard also announced that its enterprise-class infrastructure will be used by SunGard Financial Systems to provide a secure, reliable platform for its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings for its customers in the finance sector.
About the Research
The research was carried out by Vanson Bourne among 100 respondents from mid-sized organisations (150-1,000 employees in the UK).
• Sector breakdown:
o Business and professional services - 18%
o Financial services - 27%
o Government - 8%
o Transport / travel - 3%
o Retail - 14%
o Manufacturing - 23%
o Information, Communications and Technology - 7%.