Next on my cloud computing survey list is BT Global Services Enterprise Intelligence survey. The survey is broader than cloud computing, covering “CIOs and their relationship with senior corporate executives and IT systems users.” The survey report includes:
- the relationship between corporate information business performance
- demand for information
- successful collaboration
- what the CIO needs to do in the recession
- the challenges facing cloud services
- security in the cloud
- global attitudes to business success
- the role of the CIO
As someone interested in active information and the business-IT relationship, I found interesting points throughout the report. However, the one cloud computing finding I want to call out is cloud location.
Many of the clouderati will tell you that the physical location of the cloud computing environment shouldn’t matter to adopters. While technically and architecturally this might be true, given appropriate and reliable network connections, there are business implications of physical location. Most notably, regulatory and compliance concerns for cloud-resident data.
The BTGS Survey focused on the likelihood to use cloud computing environments in another country:
“For example, the majority of CIOs (57%) and senior executives (53%) around the world are not happy to run applications and store data on servers based outside their country, for IT security reasons.
Perceptions of where servers should be based revealed a pro-European focus. For CIOs and senior executives, the UK was the most popular place in the world for servers to be based, with a quarter (25%) saying they would be extremely comfortable with servers being based there. This was followed by North America (22%), Western Europe (20%) and Nordic Europe (18%).
Conversely, two thirds (68%) of CIOs and senior executives said they would be uncomfortable with servers being based in Africa, closely followed by Latin America (53%), Russia/Central Asia (43%) and the Middle East (40%). The reasons cited for such unease were security/political issues, service quality, distance and time zone issues and cost. Perceived high cost was specifically mentioned in relation to North America and Nordic Europe.”
Survey methodology: “Conducted by Datamonitor Ltd. Total sample sizes were 274 CIOs and other senior corporate executives in 12 countries and 2,476 employees who use corporate IT systems in 13 countries. Fieldwork was undertaken between 1 September 2009 and 30 September 2009. The survey was carried out online.”
