eWEEK Readers Doubt The Cloud
Years of hype haven’t convinced eWEEK Europe readers. Half our poll don’t trust the cloud. Next: how are you going to get greener?
Half the respondents to an eWEEK Europe poll on cloud computing believe it is not ready to be trusted yet – but a quarter are keen users.
The most extreme proponents of cloud computing expect it to grow massively, and replace entire IT departments with aggregated services, mostly bought in from outside the company. It’s predicted to utterly change the role of IT departments, especially as the recession pushes users to shift money away from capital expenditure.
Others think the technology is not yet secure enough or ready to be fully trusted, and are calling for regulation and certification of cloud services.
eWEEK Readers say the cloud sucks
In a poll of eWEEK readers 48.5 percent said they didn’t use the cloud because it can’t be trusted. The figure for rejection of the cloud was over fifty percent because many readers answered “Other” in order to more fully express their distaste. Responses included: “Hey, we spent all this money on networks and servers. You want we should junk it all?” and “It sucks”.
Despite this, the pro-cloud responses were strong, with a quarter of the respondents either using the cloud “in all cases possible” or “in major production systems”.
One respondent, rather strangely for someone clicking on a web page, said “We don’t trust computers at all”.
The poll mirrors one taken during an eWEEK Europe webinar, where 56 percent of listeners said the cloud was not yet ready, despite the efforts of panelists to convince them that the cloud is simply a way to free your company up to do its real business.
Traditional vendors should also be ambivalent about the cloud, as it can be very difficult to square with their traditional licensing models. Despite this, and continued evidence that users today are not keen on the cloud, major vendors – even ones like Microsoft, heavily invested in traditional licensing, are wooing it intensively.
Next poll: how do you cut your carbon footprint?
Our next poll looks at a crucial issue, given the looming danger of global warming and government measures to push companies into cutting their energy use, such as the CRC legislation.
A number of measures have been suggested to cut companies’ carbon footprint, including turning PCs off at night (or other moves to cut desktop power), running more efficient data centres, or reducing travel through technology such as videoconferencing.
Let us know which of these you favour as the number one way to reduce your carbon footprint, or tell us your favourite if we missed it. Or you could even, if you don’t believe climate change is your responsibility, tell us so.
