Whenever IT professionals are asked about cloud computing, they say that their organization is interested but cautious. Yes, they are doing a lot of research and planning and some are using public cloud services for software development and test or publicly-facing web applications. What about mission-critical applications or private data? No way, too risky!

ESG Research recently surveyed 611 North American and European IT professionals working at mid-market (i.e., 100-1000 employees) and enterprise (i.e., more than 1000 employees) organizations and asked them questions about their IT plans for 2011 and beyond. Of those surveyed, 42% said that public cloud computing would have little to no impact on their organizations’ IT strategies over the next 5 years. When asked why, security and privacy was their primary concern but there were others as well. Here are the top 5 reasons stated:

• Data security/privacy concerns: 43%
• Feel like we are giving up too much control: 32%
• Too much invested in current IT infrastructure and staff: 32%
• Cloud computing offerings need to mature: 29%
• Satisfied with existing infrastructure and processes: 28%

Times and attitudes will change and IT professionals may indeed feel threatened by cloud computing. Nevertheless, the ESG data indicates that cloud computing hesitation goes beyond security, privacy, and compliance issues alone. These attitudes will only change with time, experience, and real metrics demonstrating cloud ROI and business benefits.

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Tags: Cloud Computing, IaaS, information security, IT, PaaS, public cloud, regulatory compliance, SaaS, Security