Cloud computing is of growing interest to companies around the globe, but many are finding greater costs and greater obstacles to integration with existing IT infrastructure than they anticipated.
Those are two of the conclusions that emerge from a survey by consulting firm KPMG International, “The Cloud Takes Shape, which carries the subhead “Global cloud survey: The implementation challenge.”
Cloud computing has moved beyond hype into its implementation phase, the KPMG authors said. Instead of discussing whether or when they should adopt cloud computing, responses from the 674 business and IT executives surveyed illustrate that the concept is firmly implanted as a mainstream goal. “There is no longer any doubt that, as a critical set of enabling technologies, cloud can significantly impact how any organization conducts its business,” the study concluded.
Implementing a cloud architecture may have to include business process redesign as well as technology infrastructure redesign. As non-IT business executives rethink what cloud computing is all about, it sometimes leads to a gap between how the two groups think about it.