U.K. CIOs Foggy About Cloud ComputingU.K. CIOs Foggy About Cloud Computing

CIOs in the United Kingdom generally aren't embracing cloud computing for a variety of reasons, according to a survey released by NTT Europe.

About two-thirds of the 200 CIO respondents said they either have no plans (35%) to adopt cloud computing or are unsure (32%) whether their company will adopt the approach in the next two years. The survey found that CIOs are adopting online software and service delivery with secure hosted environments, but they're hesitating to adopt the cloud computing concept.

"Unfortunately, cloud has become a technical sell rather than a business and operational discussion, which is where the value really lies," Rob Steggles, European marketing director at NTT Europe Online, said in a statement. "Given the model’s lack of maturity, it’s understandable that businesses are waiting to see how cloud computing pans out for early adopters. If the security and reliability concerns can be ironed out, cloud computing has a bright future -- but until then it will continue to be a work in progress."

The NTT "Cloud or Fog?" survey asked the CIOs to list their top strategic priorities for the next 12 months and found they placed cloud computing at the bottom of their list for investment priority. Many CIOs -- 46% -- said they are still grappling with the very concept of cloud computing and said definitions of exactly what cloud computing consists of is unclear.

Some 77% of the respondents cited security issues, uncertain reliability, and concept immaturity as their chief reasons for not moving to cloud computing.

For the CIOs moving to cloud computing, a sizable portion (44%) said they plan to invest between 6% and 15% of their IT budgets on the phenomenon. A total of 45% said they believed cloud computing is real and not just hype. The most popular cloud computing applications under consideration or in the process of being installed by the survey respondents were content management systems, sales/CRM applications, and "non business critical applications," according to the NTT Europe report.

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