Welcome Guest. | Log In | Register | Membership Benefits

45% Of European IT Decision Makers View Security And SLAs As Leading Barriers To Cloud

Insight into cloud trends reveals opportunity for service providers and system integrators to support companies’ transition to cloud

Feb 16, 2012 | 09:30 AM | 


AMSTERDAM – 16 February 2012 – INTERXION HOLDING NV (NYSE: INXN), a leading European provider of carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, today announced the results of its cloud computing survey, which found that 45% of European IT decision makers view a lack of security and service level agreements (SLAs) as top concerns for moving to the cloud. Created with service providers (SPs) and system integrators (SIs) in mind – two of the key groups supporting companies’ transition to the cloud – the survey results aim to provide a clear understanding of how organisations are using the cloud today and plan to be using the cloud tomorrow.

The perceived challenges of moving to the cloud also include apprehension of being locked into a specific infrastructure vendor, as cited by 40% of respondents. Under the umbrella of security concerns, preventing data loss was stated as the main fear overall, with 71% of respondents identifying it as one of their top three security concerns. However, preventing outages, rated second with 64%, and was cited most often as the top issue due to the severe impact outages can have on business processes and bottom line performance.

Despite the concerns of deploying to the cloud, the survey found that 69% of European IT decision makers believe the cloud is a priority today. Large companies led the charge with 71% believing it’s a priority, with small and medium companies close behind at 68 and 67% respectively. Moreover, 75% of the companies either currently use or plan to use cloud computing within the next two years, showing significant growth potential for the industry.

“Though companies have been transitioning to the cloud for some time now, there are still perceived obstacles that need to be addressed before many companies discover the cloud’s full potential,” said Vincent in’t Veld, Director Cloud Segment , Interxion. “Interxion’s goal is to help companies realise the benefits of cloud computing, including its security, flexibility, agility and cost savings potential. The findings show how essential it is for companies like Interxion to mitigate potential fears of organisations that have plans to move to the cloud in the future.”

Encouraging results surrounding the future of the cloud come from nearly half of the respondents, who expect that more than 50% of their IT will be delivered from the cloud within the next two years, with 23% citing more than 75% of their IT expected to be housed in the cloud. Additionally, an overwhelming 90% of those planning to deploy a private cloud said that they are likely or very likely to choose a hosted solution rather than buying their own hardware, signifying the opportunity for SPs and SIs to meet the demand for these services.

Confirming that the cloud is already fully engrained in today’s business landscape and has lasting power for the future, the survey gives SPs and SIs valuable insight for delivering value to their current cloud-based customers, emphasising the need to address the security and SLA concerns of potential future customers. One way to alleviate the barriers to entry is by allowing organisations to test the cloud before fully transitioning. Interxion’s Cloud Testlab enables cloud hosting providers and SIs to do just that by developing cloud services and virtualised environments for customers with best-in-class performance guarantees before fully deploying them in the cloud.

For comprehensive cloud survey results and downloadable PDFs of the findings, please visit http://www.interxion.com/cloud-insight/index.html.

– ENDS –

About Interxion

Interxion is a leading provider of carrier-neutral colocation data centre services in Europe, serving over 1,200 customers through 28 data centres in 11 European countries. Interxion’s uniformly designed, energy-efficient data centres offer customers extensive security and uptime for their mission-critical applications. With connectivity provided by more than 400 carriers and ISPs and 18 European Internet exchanges across its footprint, Interxion has created content and connectivity hubs that foster growing customer communities of interest. For more information please visit www.interxion.com.



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dark Reading encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dark Reading moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Dark Reading further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS



Cloud Security Reports

report Monitoring And Measuring Cloud Providers' Security Performance
There is no ignoring the cloud, which means that IT professionals must find ways to monitor and measure the performance of cloud providers. While moving even in part to a cloud model is a big change for many reasons, the most significant difference is a loss of direct control. Just as security groups often struggle with managing security inside a corporation when in a governance role, we struggle even more with governing the security of assets that no longer sit within our own data centers. The challenge is to develop and implement a strong governance model for these cloud offerings that ensures that security is part of the conversation.

report How to Manage Identity in the Public Cloud
Use of the public cloud for enterprise applications complicates what was already a complicated task: identity management. As companies increase their use of cloud-based applications, IT and security professionals must make some tough and far-reaching decisions about how to provision, deprovision and otherwise manage user access. This Dark Reading report examines the options and provides recommendations for determining which one is right for your organization.

report Spot Trouble In The Cloud: Adapting Security Monitoring & Incident Response.
Security monitoring, incident response and forensics are essential, even in the cloud. But the cloud by definition implies relinquishing at least some control, which can make these practices problematic. In this report, we identify the challenges of detecting and responding to security issues in the cloud and discuss the most effective ways to address them.

Other reports from the Cloud Security Tech Center:




Featured Webcasts
Featured Whitepapers
Featured Reports