Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery said: “Moving to the cloud is often more complex than just flicking a switch to get an off-the-shelf-service. Depending on the cloud service being adopted, data will have to be transferred and staff migrated to new ways of working. It can be a complex process.
“IT leaders looking for a provider should first assess their existing in-house skills and experience to understand how reliant they will be on the supplier to ensure a smooth transition. Equally, cloud suppliers need to be more sensitive to their customers’ requirements and tailor their service to the level of support needed for successful cloud adoption.”
The research polled 250 senior IT decision-makers in companies with UK-based operations and was conducted in February 2015.
Problems in service delivery could be caused by a number of factors. The stack of cloud services on offer may be poorly constructed, leading to complications with integrating services with a customer’s legacy systems. There could be a lack of knowledge within the cloud provider of the customer’s existing IT estate, which would make it harder to achieve a smooth migration. Alternatively, the network of partners established by the cloud provider may not be stable enough so that if difficulties emerge, there may not be clear lines of responsibility to resolve issues swiftly.
Piers continues: “The cloud industry is still reaching maturity and without enough due-diligence some end-users could get burned. However, the CIF research also reported a 90 per cent satisfaction rate and that 70 per cent of IT leaders intend to increase their use of cloud in the next 12 months.
“The most critical factor is for IT leaders to really get under the bonnet of their potential cloud provider, make sure that the have a strong and highly integrated stack of partners and a proven track record of delivery for other customers with needs similar to their own.”