Almost 60% of Europe’s chief information officers believe they can migrate to cloud services without any updates to their corporate networks.
Research by managed services firm Easynet showed just 43% of information chiefs plan network improvements to cope with the extra demands of cloud computing, despite 47% revealing plans to increase investment in the technology over the next 12 months.
“Companies will not get the benefits they expect from cloud computing unless CIOs consider the entire scenario, not just where their data is stored,” Easynet CTO Justin Fielder notes. “CIOs must realize that the ability to deliver to end-users is a vital element of any cloud strategy.”
Of the 800 technology chiefs quizzed in Germany, France, Italy, Benelux, Switzerland and the UK, 20% regard cloud computing as a risk to their business because they can’t guarantee uptime to end users. The study also revealed that most executives have no means of measuring return on investment in cloud technologies, with just 33% saying they have the capability.
The survey revealed high knowledge of the potential cost benefits offered by the cloud, with 55% citing lower IT spend as a prime goal.
“We know from experience that this potential can only be realized when businesses have a robust, reliable hosting platform coupled with a network that is intrinsically reliable. It might seem obvious, however there is not much point having your applications running in the cloud if you can’t actually access them,” Fielder points out.