IT Managers Slow to Embrace Cloud Computing

By Michael Biddick, InformationWeek, October 29, 2008 10:20 AM

Although 65% of the business technology professionals we polled for our recent InformationWeek Analytics cloud computing report have not yet identified moving IT functions into the cloud as a priority, we expect that to change in fairly short order.

This is, simply, an evolutionary step.

The proliferation of telework, laptops, smartphones, and other Internet-connected gadgets means enterprise users may possess two or three different devices, and frustration is rampant as they attempt to synchronize information across disparate form factors and operating systems. They just want to get to the applications and data they need, when they need them.

Cloud computing vendors are riding a perfect storm of software-as-a-service and grid computing, virtualization, co-location, outsourced Web hosting, and pervasive broadband and 3G wireless Internet access to enable the move toward anywhere, anytime access to business applications.Now, IT's ingrained skepticism was apparent in the 23% of business technology pros polled who, when asked how they felt about cloud computing, wrote it off as "just hype; old premise, different name." We understand their stance--transformational change is always difficult--but today's mobile, interconnected environments demand new approaches to delivering business apps. Cloud computing will move to the forefront of the market, and IT organizations will not be able to ignore it. Nor should they, a fact not lost on other respondents: "I believe that the ability to buy CPU time, storage, and application function in a SaaS-type model in the same ways that companies buy electricity, rent, and cleaning services will do amazing things for budgets and planning," says one reader.

Read on at InformationWeek.com