The financial incentives are clear (for small to medium-sized businesses anyway) so what are the main obstacles to cloud computing adoption? Chapter 3 described a number of key risks associated with cloud computing and suggested ways of mitigating these risks. Most of these risks surround data protection and security issues, which often prevent companies from purchasing cloud services. A 2009 survey by Hosting.com of company executives and IT professionals revealed very similar cloud computing adoption rates for smaller and larger companies, but security was more of a concern for larger companies (Hosting.com, 2009). But, aside from security, in my experience the two most common objections to cloud computing are internal resistance and internet dependency.
Internal resistance
Key people in IT departments may perceive cloud computing as a threat. They may fear losing control of key systems and they may even fear for their jobs. Their fears are well founded because one of the key benefits of cloud computing
is that it can reduce the number of administration tasks that need to be carried out on back-end IT systems, but, on the other hand, it also frees up your IT staff to work more on front-end applications where there is potentially more business value to be gleaned. Provided a number of suggestions to help you engage with your staff while investigating cloud computing solutions.
Internet dependency
Perhaps the main issue with cloud computing is still the inherent dependency on the internet, but modern business
persons are rarely far away from an internet connection. At home they have broadband, they connect their laptops
using 3G or a public wireless network when they are on the road, and they have mobile devices running web browsers,
e-mail clients and numerous business software applications. Moreover, despite the security risks within public clouds,
your business is probably more likely to lose a laptop containing company data than to have data stolen from the cloud. If, however, you do choose a public cloud product with offline capabilities then it would be wise to employ data encryption tools or at least password protection on your local device.