Less than one in five (18%) IT professionals believe their present cloud infrastructure satisfies their business needs, indicating a large disconnect between expectations and reality when it comes to cloud adoption. This is according to new data from SolarWinds, based on a survey of 272 global IT professionals, which shows that despite the cloud’s promises […]
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The UK Government has approved a contract worth up to £1 billion ($1.3 billion) to enable public sector bodies to transition to cloud-based services. The Crown Commercial Service, part of the Cabinet Office, recently announced this contract under the G-Cloud 14 framework, the latest iteration of its cloud computing procurement program. According to The Register,… Read more »
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Qlik has launched its new cloud regions in London, UK, and Frankfurt, Germany, enhancing its continued commitment to support growing demand for cloud adoption and innovation in EMEA and around the world. Specifically, these new regions support organisations with UK- and Germany-based footprints that require alignment with region-specific data privacy laws and data locality requirements… Read more »
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Research from Trustmarque has highlighted 81% of CIOs believe legacy infrastructures are having a negative impact on the IT department’s productivity levels.
The report stated the majority of CIOs see the legacy systems as a drain on IT resources and 86% believe IT management has become more complex over the last five years, owing to the fact teams have to juggle between the impact of cloud and mobile, as well as delivering on legacy systems. Due to the increased number of SLA’s and an increasingly diverse number of vendors to support both new and legacy technologies, 58% are struggling to deliver a consistent level of IT across the business.
“Providing comprehensive, consistent IT support in today’s complex IT world is a huge challenge for CIOs. It’s unsurprising many are finding IT management a growing burden,” said Mike Henson, Director, Cloud and Managed Services, Trustmarque. “Particularly where there is a lot of legacy technology, CIOs have an important decision to make – whether to continue to support legacy IT, or explore migration to the cloud – where support costs can be considerably lower.
“Today, IT might be easier to use than ever, but it’s also much more complex to manage and support. The business IT model has shifted, digital experiences are high on the agenda, along with a desire to consume rather than build IT. This shift has caused considerable strain on CIOs’ time, resources and budgets.”
While cloud could now be seen as a priority throughout the industry, the majority of businesses are having to navigate a number of transformation projects to implement the technology. In reality, very few companies are in a position to deliver a Greenfield cloud proposition within their organization, leading to complications in managing the co-existence of cloud and legacy, as the report indicates.
One are which this is seemingly having a direct impact is on innovation. As IT complexity has increased, the report indicates the number of ‘tickets’ being raised throughout the business has also increased. This in turn keeps IT employees focused on operational tasks (“keeping the lights on”) as opposed to focusing on implementation of new technologies to support digital transformation projects. 77% of the CIOs questioned in the survey confirmed one of their top priorities was to reduce the proportion of internal resource devoted to operational IT, freeing team members up to invest more time in transformational IT projects.
“In today’s increasingly connected world, business IT is unpredictable – changing to reflect varied business needs and the ways in which modern employees want to work,” said Henson. “Many CIOs struggle to balance the need to run business IT as usual, while at the same time delivering innovative new services to demanding users. Clearly, CIOs recognise the growing need for continued innovation within their organisation – but also recognise that a lack of internal resources and skills can hamper this ambition.”
Although general consensus throughout the industry is leaning towards cloud penetrating the mainstream marketplace, it is unlikely we’ll see cloud and other emerging technologies as the default until resource can be effectively moved away from operational IT. A number of different businesses have stated the need to transform to remain competitive in the marketplace, thought the report does imply these projects are unlikely to succeed until the idea of IT as simply a support function is removed from the business mind-set.
An influential group of senior business executives is being disillusioned by experiences with cloud hosted applications, according to new research. The proportions, though relatively low, are growing as cloud disenchantment threatens to set in.
The revelations come from research by cloud service provider Stratogen. Its main finding was that the expense, the lack of both applications and support and the downtime involved are all disappointing the company decision makers who backed cloud computing in their companies.
If news of the disenchantment spreads among the business community, the bad feedback could nip cloud growth in the bud, according to Karl Robinson, chief commercial officer at StratoGen. “The research highlights a major problem for cloud technology,” said Robinson, “It is clear UK businesses today have a distinct lack of confidence in the cloud’s ability to deliver the benefits it is capable of.”
The study, conducted independently by Arlington Research, involved a survey of 1000 senior business executives. Around three quarters (74 per cent) of the survey group reported day to day frustrations with using cloud hosted applications.
The main complaint for 20 per cent of the study group was the high cost of their cloud applications. Another minority (17 per cent) complained about the lack of available cloud applications. The lack of IT support was mentioned by 16 per cent of the survey and one tenth of those surveyed were not happy with the amount of downtime.
As a result, a minority of the survey group (17 per cent of the business leaders quizzed) are concerned that their cloud systems are preventing their company from growing. Around the same proportion (14 per cent) are worried that downtime is affecting employee productivity and creating a loss of company earnings.
Though these are complaints from a small minority, the survey figures seem to indicate that their influence is disproportionally high, since 33 per cent of the business leaders say they are now ready to remove their business off the cloud completely. A further 31 per cent are also considering a cloud exodus.
“The perceived high cost of cloud hosting is a direct result of the unexpected metered costs businesses are all too often hit with,” said Robinson, “migration challenges and the time invested in integrating cloud technology with legacy applications can further increase the cost of cloud computing.”
UK CIOs are concerned cloud adoption is reducing their control over IT
A recent survey of 100 UK CIOs suggests close to nine in ten believe unsanctioned use of cloud services has created long term security risks for their organisations, and about 84 per cent believe cloud adoption reduces their organisation’s control over IT more broadly.
The survey, commissioned by Fruition Partners, looks specifically at IT service management (ITSM) trends in large UK companies (organisations with more than 1,000 employees).
The results suggest CIOs are still very concerned a lack of maturity around cloud service management and application support within enterprises is driving more ‘Shadow IT’ in their organisations.
About 60 per cent of respondents said there is an increasing culture of ‘Shadow IT’ in their organisations, and 79 per cent believe there are cloud services in use that IT does now know about.
Over three quarters (78 per cent) of CIOs stated that the rest of the business frequently does not seek their advice when it comes to the procurement of public cloud services, and about one in two CIOs believe their employees are side-stepping their own IT departments and going directly to cloud service providers for application support.
“CIOs need to remember that while the availability of public cloud services may mean they need to provide fewer IT services themselves, it doesn’t reduce the need for the management of those services. In fact, it’s arguable that the need for rigorous management actually increases. Of course you should expect public cloud services to work faultlessly, however you’d be crazy to blindly trust that they will, without managing and monitoring how those services are delivered to the business,” said Paul Cash, managing director of Fruition Partners UK.
Cash explained that regardless of the type of cloud service IT departments should still be managing them internally rather than “handing over all responsibility to cloud providers.”
“CIOs must make it easier for employees in other lines of business to work with the IT department to source the cloud services they want,” he said. “There are simple initial steps they can take to do this, such as creating and publishing a comprehensive service catalogue which is exposed to the entire business. A service catalogue that lists sanctioned public cloud services will reduce the impact of shadow IT and make it far easier for employees throughout the organisation to buy cloud services from the IT department – while ensuring that IT can control and manage the services that are implemented.”