Survey: More Execs Than IT Managers Are ‘Cloud Believers’

A new survey by Evolve IP finds some conflicting opinions about cloud computing in mid-size enterprises. While everyone agrees that companies will be doing more in the cloud in the future, C-level executives are much more likely than IT managers to describe themselves as “cloud believers.”

Gina Roos with eWeek reported, “Cloud computing is considered the future model for IT by 87 percent of respondents to a midmarket business survey conducted by Evolve IP, a cloud services provider. Interestingly, the survey finds that executives and IT directors value cloud services more than IT managers do. They also plan to spend more on cloud services than IT managers despite disaster avoidance, scalability and flexibility benefits. The biggest adoption barrier is still security issues.”

Joe McKendrick with Forbes explained, “A new survey of 1,182 executives conducted by Evolve IP, a cloud services company, finds that at least 70% of C-level executives and directors see the value of the cloud and consider themselves to be ‘believers.’ In contrast, only 53% of the people that will need to roll up their sleeves to make cloud happen — IT managers — are entirely sold on the cloud concept.”

ZDNet’s Heather Clancy added, “It probably won’t surprise you to hear that the companies where there were more high-level ‘believers’ tended to have a higher number of cloud services in place than average (3.1 hosted services versus 2.5 services for the average company). Those who were ‘unconvinced’ had fewer (1.3 cloud services).”

In the press release, Evolve IP COO Guy Fardone stated, “The survey data reflects what we see in our business every day. Most businesses already have at least one hosted service running but in some organizations not everyone is in complete alignment regarding putting multiple services in the cloud. Executives want the cost and disaster avoidance benefits while security, privacy and compliance are typical initial concerns brought up by the managers responsible for implementation.”