In a new whitepaper, Capita IT Services suggests several key factors are driving businesses to adopt cloud services and applications which may not provide the best return on investment in the long run and may not meet their needs.
The whitepaper - Solving the Cloud Chaos Conundrum – outlines three trends which may lead to cloud chaos, as firms seek to take advantage of the benefits of moving to cloud services:
1. The ‘multiple choice’ effect – cloud opens up the opportunity to purchase from multiple suppliers on multiple platforms, increasing complexity;
2. The ‘benefit rush’ effect – the promise of substantial savings has led to a rush to adopt cloud, often leading to a lack of strategic planning;
3. The ‘entry point’ effect – some parts of an organisation adopt Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) while others have opted for Software as a Service (SaaS), leaving gaps in cloud adoption strategy without a platform from which to operate cloud services.
Paul Birkin, chief technology officer, Capita IT Services, said: “A robust cloud adoption strategy should already be at the heart of every IT policy for every organisation if they want to avoid falling into the cloud chaos trap.
“The potential for the cloud to offer increasing innovation and agility to businesses of all sizes is clear, but unless it is adopted in a coherent and planned way it is unlikely to bring the returns on investment that chief information officers expect.”