The results of two recent Deloitte surveys of Cloud Computing adoption have revealed that Ireland is seriously lagging in its adoption of Cloud Computing. In the European survey 80% of respondents said that they already use (or will use within 6 months) Cloud Computing within their organisation. The result of the Deloitte Ireland survey make for surprising reading against this backdrop with adoption rates at only half of the European level. Given our national drive to brand ourselves as a cloud computing hot spot this is a very disappointing result. On a more positive note over three quarters of respondents plan to increase their cloud usage in the next 18 months.
Why then are Irish adoption rates so low?
The answer to this is partly speculative and one cannot discount the high level of uncertainty and very tough business and IT budgetary climate in which all organisations have been operating in the past few years. However this cannot be the full story. The survey results suggests some of the reasons behind the reticence to adopt, including reaction to high profile outages in the last year which caused nearly 25% of Irish respondents to review or even cancel cloud computing projects. Availability of skills, Data protection legislation and the adequacy of Ireland's communications infrastructure were also identified by respondents as obstacles the government needs to overcome in order to drive the Cloud Computing agenda in Ireland. These last three might be the most telling but I suspect that the truth of the matter is that it a combination of all these factors as well as the profound impact that Cloud adoption has on an organisation's IT operating model (and the threat this can pose to individuals) has limited adoption to date.
I firmly believe that this low level of adoption will only be short lived as the alternative is stagnation for IT departments, damage to our international reputation as a technology hub and a loss in competitiveness for Irish business - none of which Ireland inc. can afford.
The Deloitte Ireland CIO survey and accompaying iPhone app can be found at: www.deloitte.com/ie/ciosurvey2011
The European survey result can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/6b362v4
Thursday, November 3, 2011
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