What are the barriers to business adoption in Ireland and Europe?

Ed Byrne November 24, 2010 at 12:29 PM

I think awareness of Cloud Computing is now very high among businesses and IT managers - but adoption is still low and there is a lot of misinformation and scaremongery floating around. What are the barriers to businesses adopting IaaS services? What would be the catalyst to drive adoption?

Ray Nolan November 24, 2010 at 7:58 PM

I think initial fear over "where's my data and who might have access to it" is being replaced with confusion over how to implement.

The original issue was always a non issue IMO, as it's just as likely that a sysadmin in a standard hosting environment, or one of the company's own employees with "do something bad".

The model you guys are pushing now ... use robust Amazon in the cloud, but with local Irish support and simplified CEO understandable business models is great.

I just wished I could get out of the 3 yr overpriced crap contract I'm in now :)

Ed Byrne November 24, 2010 at 8:43 PM

Thanks Ray - we obviously think the model has potential - across Europe. Exec's definitely have an appetite for Cloud now - the confusion and complexity around it is the huge opp. for us to solve. The hard part is when businesses like yourself are locked into contracts - or have recently wasted money on physical hardware. Patience is an expensive requirement - but we'll get there - it's a big market! If you spot any opp's maybe you'd mention our name?! Ed.

Last edited by Ed Byrne at November 24, 2010 at 8:43 PM

Richard Bowden December 10, 2010 at 10:58 AM

Ed, To follow-on from Ray's points, there is still some fear over data protection and security, partly legal and partly due to a lack of awareness of the technical capability and processes within cloud service providers. Initiatives like the global Common Assurance Metric and the recent announcement by the Cloud Industry Forum (advocate group) in the UK of a code of practice for service providers helps remove doubt and confusion.

The other factor impacting the roll-out of cloud services is related to companies asking how they link their existing on-premise systems with possible cloud services, because it's unlikely that a company will 'move' everything to the cloud in one go, even if they wished to. Again as awareness increases of web services / api apps that can link cloud to cloud or on-premise to cloud and case studies are published about companies who have a range of on-premise and cloud based offerings, all communciating in a secure manner, this challenge will be removed.

Richie