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The adoption of cloud computing within the enterprise has grown steadily, but security and compliance remain key considerations when evaluating in-house and service provider options, according to a report from NaviSite, a Time Warner Cable company.
The survey revealed one-third of U.S. respondents have already migrated a significant amount (50-70 percent) of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, driven by their desire to improve reliability, uptime and offer improved service levels.
Nearly all U.S. respondents reflected some level of concern in securing enterprise data as part of their list of IT priorities, with nearly half (48 percent) citing it among their top three concerns.
“Much of the survey data was not surprising, as it aligned with trends we are seeing with our customers and within the industry,” Chris Patterson, senior director of product management at NaviSite, told eWEEK. “It’s great to see that 65 percent of respondents stated IaaS private cloud is a top priority for 2015. Seeing security and compliance as key considerations when evaluating a move to cloud, that was expected.”
Patterson noted cloud adoption is moving from the early adopters and development-oriented organizations to the more traditional, legacy workloads.
“We look forward to more applications being written for the cloud, but the economics and overall convenience of cloud will bring in more and more line-of-business applications as well,” he said. “Our survey shows that security is still one of the biggest concerns when looking at cloud or colocation, but the last few years have proved that cloud is just as secure as a private data center, and in many cases, more so.”
The study found security continues to be a key priority when enterprise organizations look at migrating IT workloads to either an IaaS model (61 percent) or when considering colocation services (58 percent).
Growing confidence and sustained demand continues to drive adoption of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with a keen interest in private cloud and hybrid cloud services going into 2015.
According to the survey, 65 percent of U.S. respondents identified IaaS private cloud as one of their top priorities in the coming year, and consider a service provider’s ability to personalize solution as a key criterion for vendor selection.
One-quarter of U.S. respondents said one of the primary considerations when evaluating desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solutions is the ability to secure corporate data while extending a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy to employees.
More than half (56 percent) of respondents currently do not have a BYOD policy in place and implementing BYOD remains a priority with nearly half of respondents citing they are considering this over the next twelve months.
Among the barriers in implementing BYOD, IT leaders find themselves facing several key challenges such as IT team resources and skills (60 percent), platform and device preferences (54 percent) and executive buy-in (40 percent).
“As with any major project, the key is to start small, get some internal successes and build from there. Don’t roll out a BYOD program to 1,000 users at once; pick a few tech savvy users from each department and work with them to identify and work through the nuances required for each group,” Patterson explained. “Some departments will be better fits than others based on application needs, so bring on the easy ones first before working up to the more complex users. Above all else, don’t onboard the senior execs until the system is bulletproof and your support staff is confident.”