Security: Leading Cause Of User Hesitancy In Adopting Cloud Computing

According to an online poll recently conducted by Unisys, security and data privacy concerns remain the most significant impediment to the adoption of cloud computing among enterprise users.

Of the 312 respondents, 51 percent cited security and data privacy concerns when answering the question, ‘What do you see as your greatest barrier to moving to the cloud?’ The next-highest barrier to adoption of cloud computing, cited by 21 percent of the respondents, was integration of cloud-based applications with existing systems.

Concerns about the ability to bring systems back in-house and regulatory/ compliance issues were cited by 18 percent and 10 percent of respondents, respectively.

The poll results corroborated the outcome of another quick poll Unisys conducted in a June 2009 webinar on protecting data in the cloud, which was attended by more than 100 major firms and government agencies. Answering the question, ‘What is your greatest concern about moving workloads to the cloud?’, 72 percent of the respondents to that poll cited security concerns. Other considerations ranked significantly lower on the scale of urgency – for example, integration issues were next highest at 34 percent.

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"These poll results confirm what we continue to hear from our clients as well as industry analysts," said Sam Gross, vice president, Global IT Outsourcing Solutions. "Until they are convinced that there is 'industrial-strength' security in the cloud, CIOs will remain reluctant to move more than development and test systems into that environment."