Lack of infrastructure control, loss of data ownership, vendor lock-in and data security are the top four concerns decision-makers mull over when moving into cloud computing.
Kendal Watt, head of technical pre-sales for Mimecast, said the fundamental security questions CEOs ask have changed over the past 12 months.
Watt spoke during the ITWeb Cloud Computing conference, held in Bryanston, yesterday.
He said one of the top fears on the minds of CEOs is who owns the data from a contractual level, and does the cloud vendor own the cloud computing platform or is it made up of third-party solutions bonded together?
Watt pointed out that the perceived concern of moving data into the cloud has not stopped the technology increasing exponentially year-on-year.
“These four fears often overshadow the true software-as-a-service (SaaS) benefit, namely transforming the IT department from a helpdesk to a differentiator. SaaS will continue to mature and customer faith will increase as the primary vendors emerge as trusted vendors in the industry.”
Compliance issues
There are legal implications about where data is hosted and how it's governed, said Watt, pointing to Sarbanes-Oxley. He stated that it's critical for organisations to ask for trustworthy references and to do their homework before putting their valuable confidential data into a hosted environment.
“Over the next two to five years, SaaS solutions will become mainstream, and by 2012, SaaS will become commonplace for businesses great and small.”
Watt noted that data security has been a fear of cloud sceptics since the introduction of cloud computing, including issues such as the potential for multi-tenant systems to cross-contaminate data and data breaches. “Security needs to be of the utmost importance to a cloud vendor,” he stressed.
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