The cloud is exploding globally, with most of IT spending soon to be allocated to cloud, according to a new Intel report.
The technology company predicts that virtually all IT spending (80%) will be on cloud in the next 16 months. One reason is that ever-increasing digital activities “are leveraging cloud computing in some way,” the company said in its press release.
And it is happening quickly, according to the survey of 1,200 IT executives in eight countries, which was conducted by market research provider Vanson Bourne on behalf of Intel.
Some countries’ enterprises will hit the 80% mark even faster than the average of 16 months. Australia, for example, is projected to get to that point in just 11 months. The US is expected to hit the mark 14 months from now.
“This is a new era for cloud providers,” said Raj Samani, chief technology officer, Intel Security EMEA, in the release. “We are at the tipping point of investment and adoption.”
Cloud security concerns
Swimmingly then for cloud, right? It’s taking over the world. Well, maybe, but there is a potential hiccup, and that is security, according to some of the survey respondents.
Although three-quarters (77%) of the respondents said they trust the cloud more than they did a year ago, many (20%) are worried about software as a service (SaaS)-oriented data security incidents occurring on their watch.
“Data breaches were a top concern for IaaS and private clouds,” too, the study (PDF) found.
For definition, SaaS is software and services over the Internet, and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is access to computing resources over the internet.
A third kind of cloud computing, platform as a service (PaaS), encompasses environments for development over the internet. Security as a service (SECaaS) is a fourth.
Intel’s survey revealed trends related to those principal types of cloud services. It found most organisations (81%) were looking at spending on IaaS, about the same number (79%) want to spend on SECaaS, and PaaS and SaaS round out the pack at 69% and 60%, respectively.
Compliance issues were a concern with cloud for most of the IT executives (72%). Many weren’t up on whether their organisations did indeed store sensitive information in the cloud, with a significant 14% being oblivious. They did not know.
While the IT executives perceived potential security issues, they had little confidence in their bosses completely understanding the “security implications of the cloud,” Intel discovered.
Security assurance
“Many respondents feel there is still a need for more education and increased awareness and understanding of risks associated with storing sensitive data in the cloud,” Intel said.
Intel, through its brands Intel Security and McAfee, is a cloud security services vendor. In addition, Intel Security is a corporate member of The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), an organisation that provides “security assurance within cloud computing and provides education,” according to the CSA web site.
One big problem for the aforementioned security-worriers mentioned in the release is shadow IT. That’s where employees and departments build out their own IT systems or use tools without official IT approval.
“Shadow IT has a negative impact on their ability to keep cloud services secure,” Intel said.
IDG News Service
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