What are the biggest barriers to cloud adoption?

exploring barriers to cloud adoption

The rapid adoption of cloud technology would suggest that few companies are overly concerned about its perceived drawbacks. The figures support this: by 2016, technology research firm Gartner forecasts the global market for cloud services to grow by 100%, while the overall IT market will only grow by 3%.

Despite such confidence, it's not unusual for perceived disadvantages to sway a company's decision not to adopt cloud technology. Barriers to adoption can prove insurmountable despite all the advantages of cloud technology.

What are the most common barriers to cloud adoption and how can cloud providers and businesses overcome them?

Downtime

It follows that service uptime is what companies want from a cloud provider and 100% uptime would be most ideal. A service uptime of 98% (the lower end of the scale) works out to be 29 minutes of downtime a day, 14 hours per week and 7 days per year. Meanwhile a service uptime of 99.9% (the upper end) works out to be less than 1 hour per month and 9 hours per year.

MailGuard provides a minimum service uptime of 99.9% for our spam filtering service and have a historical service uptime of 100%. This in fact outperforms in-house solutions that companies adopt instead of cloud services.

There's more information on measuring cloud uptime on cloudreviews.com.

Data sovereignty

Keeping your confidential data exactly that and not trusting it to a third part is another major reason to avoid adopting cloud.Take Google for instance. If you go into a contract with them, you have to agree with their controversial privacy policy. You also have to consider the conflicting interest between Google Apps and Google's core advertising business.

But the same doesn't apply for every cloud provider. Problems arise with this thinking because a workforce is more mobile than ever. Maintaining data within the four walls of your organisation is no longer the most effective – or most secure – way to safeguard your confidential information.

Cloud providers have stronger operational systems than many organisations. Typically they feature a wealth of resources and expertise to protect your data. For example, here at MailGuard, we are supported by a multi-million dollar infrastructure and significant investment into research, development and system enhancements every year.

There is more information on data security in the cloud in a previous post.

Support

Cloud services are generally "set and forget" meaning once they are set up, they require minimal administration and minimal contact with the provider. But every now and then, when a problem arises or the proverbial hits the fan, responsive support is expected, particularly if it's something critical to their business.

Cloud providers who fail to provide that level of support leave customers feeling helpless and frustrated. Exemplary support from cloud providers is both proactive and extremely responsive. For example at MailGuard, we offer 24x7 phone support and boast a 98% first call resolution rate.

The bottom line

Adopting cloud technology is a fantastic decision for a business. But it's worthwhile noting that not all cloud providers are equal. Before you choose your cloud provider make sure you do thorough research. They should be able to address all of your concerns. If not, they probably aren't the right fit for you.

(image credit: Tecnopolis Argentina)