Government Regulation Top Concern in Cloud Confidence

Survey results released by ISACA and the Cloud Security Alliance suggest that the concerns working against the adoption of cloud computing are moving away for data security.

The survey, which collected responses from 250 respondents in "nearly" 50 countries, found that the issues business and enterprise cloud customers are least confident about are (ranked in their order of importance from most to least important):

• Government regulations keeping pace with the market
• Exit strategies
• International data privacy
• Legal issues]
• Contract lock in
• Data ownership and custodian responsibilities
• Longevity of suppliers
• Integration of cloud with internal systems
• Credibility of suppliers
• Testing and assurance

Almost a quarter of respondents (24 percent) indicated that they are not happy with the level of innovation and believe that there is no or very limited innovation in cloud computing, while 43 percent said they see a "moderate" level of innovation happening. Only a third of respondents perceive innovation in cloud computing as significant. According to the CSA "nearly all respondents" said that "cloud computing is far from reaching maturity", where IaaS and PaaS are considered to be in their infancy stages.

Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.com blog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

See here for all of Wolfgang's Tom's IT Pro articles.

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