Public Cloud adoption leaving Aussie CIOs in the dark: Survey

A new survey of C-level executives has revealed that Australian CIOs are concerned about the effect of Cloud sprawl, with the increase in public Cloud services being a large thorn in the side of IT teams.

In-depth: Legal issues in the Cloud.

The Avanade-sponsored report, Has Cloud computing matured?, found Australian companies view the Cloud as a positive business opportunity, but IT departments are often left in the dark when it comes to deployments.

Avanade Australia country manager, Jeyan Jeevaratnam, said public Clouds are hard to manage, as most IT managers cannot control employee use.

“As is true with many forms of technology innovation, consumer technology has a way of secretly creeping into the enterprise and leaving IT in the dark,” Jeevaratnam said in a statement.

“Today, public Cloud services are no different.

“The barrier to entry for many Cloud capabilities continues to lower, and our research shows some are so easy to use, they are outpacing IT’s ability to manage and control them.”

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A visiting internet researcher and former Barack Obama campaign member, said today that Cloud will help improve security for internet users, but the Avanade report found that 73 per cent of those surveyed worldwide were worried about the riskof Cloud sprawl, while a quarter indicated they had purchased online Cloud services without their IT department’s knowledge.

Despite such concerns, Jeevaratnam said Australian companies were aware of the benefits of having applications in the Cloud, with 71 per cent of local enterprises using such services, with a whole of business approach taking priority.

“It is clear that companies are not taking an all-or-nothing approach when it comes to Cloud adoption,” Jeevaratnam said.

“The involvement of the C-suite in technology decision-making means a more business-driven approach to IT.

“As a result, their strategy for cloud adoption may be phased and include a combination of cloud and on-premise applications, dependent on business need.”

The impact of Cloud on the enterprise has driven NICTA to announce today the appointment of Dr Bruce McCabe to drive the national body’s Cloud computing business strategy.

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