As I continue to engage customers around cloud and DevOps, I am amazed at the percentage of customers where there is pushback against cloud computing. Even more interesting are the reasons and roles responsible for denying advancement in the use of cloud in companies. For example, one IT executive is caught between the business, where the board is pushing for use of cloud and the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) that is saying, “you can move processes out to the cloud, but not data.”
One thing is clear, there is a lot of misunderstanding going around when the word “cloud” is used. Many still immediately associate it with public, multi-tenant cloud solutions where their processes and data will be co-located with those from many other businesses. Security is still high on the list of reasons for businesses not engaging with cloud solutions faster. Those with cloudaphobia cite examples, such as Target and JP Morgan Chase as reasons against using cloud, which is hysterical when you consider that these are examples of breaches that occurred against privately managed data center systems.