Alex Hilton, APM Group, Cloud Industry Forum, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, Richard Pharro

CIF: ‘Lack of trust holding back cloud adoption’

CIF: 'Cloud users are still citing the same inhibitors'

CIF: ‘Cloud users are still citing the same inhibitors’

Security, privacy and lack of control are still the leading inhibitors holding enterprises back from adopting cloud services, according to the Cloud Industry Forum’s latest research.

The CIF, which polled 250 senior IT decision-makers in the UK earlier this year to better understand where cloud services fit into their overall IT strategies, said when asked about their biggest concerns during the decision-making process to move to the cloud, 70 per cent cited data security and 61 per cent data privacy.

Both are up from the 2014 figures of 61 per cent and 54 per cent, respectively.

“Hybrid will be the modus operandi for the majority of organisations for the foreseeable future, being either not yet ready to move everything to the cloud, or unwilling to. There are a number of contributing factors here: fear of losing control of IT systems, security and privacy concerns, and lack of budget currently stand in the way of greater adoption of cloud by businesses,” said Alex Hilton, chief executive of the CIF.

“The primary issue relates to trust: trust that cloud-based data will be appropriately secured, that it won’t be compromised or inadvertently accessed, and that businesses will be able to retrieve and migrate their data when a contract terminates.”

About 40 per cent of respondents were also concerned they would lose control/manageability of their IT systems when moving to cloud, up from 24 per cent last year.

Richard Pharro, chief executive of APM Group, the CIF’s independent certification partner said cloud providers need to improve how to disclose their privacy and security practices in order to inspire more confidence among current and potential users.

“Some Cloud providers are opaque in the way that they operate. The prevalence of click-through licenses, some of which are littered with unrealistic terms and conditions,” Pharro said, adding that improving public disclosure in cloud contracts could go some way towards improving trust and confidence among customers.