A new research has found that businesses in Europe run the risk of being left out of the benefits of cloud computing, with 57% of them believing that their existing network can cope without any investment.
The study, conducted by a provider of managed network, managed hosting and value added services, Easynet Global Services, shows that many CIOs fail to consider their corporate network as part of their strategy.
The study shows that 49% of CIOs intend to increase their investment in cloud technologies over the coming year, and that one-in-five consider their corporate network to be a key concern when moving to the cloud.
However, most CIOs seem to think that their network can scale up to the required technology without any investment. Though 43% of the CIOs surveyed have identified that they would need to upgrade their network, 57% believe their network can cope without any investment.
Moreover, over a third of respondents believe cloud poses a material risk to their business as they cannot guarantee uptime to their end users.
Easynet Global Services CTO Justin Fielder said just as retailers know that their ability to fulfil orders from the warehouse to the customer is crucial to their success, so CIOs must realise that the ability to deliver to end-users is a vital element of any cloud strategy.
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Fielder added, "Companies will not get the benefits they expect from cloud computing unless CIOs consider the entire scenario, not just where their data is stored."
The CIOs know that cloud computing will benefit their business. Reducing IT spend was the most important consideration for CIOs in their decision-making process, with 55% believing that moving to the cloud would bring about cost savings. Flexibility and scalability were also considered key advantages.
However, less than a third of CIOs were confident that they had a method of measuring the return on investment (ROI) of their cloud projects.
Fielder said, "Cloud is changing the way our customers do business. It offers them levels of efficiency and flexibility that were previously unimaginable. We know from experience that this potential can only be realised when businesses have a robust, reliable hosting platform coupled with a network that is intrinsically reliable. It might seem obvious, however there is not much point having your applications running in the cloud if you can’t actually access them, but this research suggests the majority of CIOs have yet to appreciate this."
