In this second of a five-part review of cloud computing and its likely development trends, Leslie Willcocks, Will Venters and Edgar Whitley of the London School of Economics focus on the challenges cloud will present for buyers and providers of services.
One major finding of the research is that business executives and senior IT executives weighted the risks of cloud computing somewhat differently. For business executives, the top five concerns are data security and privacy, data housed offshore, compliance/regulatory issues, exit strategy and lock-in risks and the credibility of suppliers.
IT executives agreed that security and offshoring of data were significant new risks, but they weighted a cloud exit strategy and lock-in as a much greater risk than their business colleagues. These and other variants in risk weightings could give rise to a “Risk Perception Gap.”
The research also identified an “Expectations Gap” between the relatively high expectations of the benefits of cloud held by business executives as compared with the more circumspect views of IT executives.