Without the proper cloud migration strategy, 39pc of IT decision makers would rather have a root canal, dig a ditch, or do their own taxes than address network challenges associated with public or private cloud deployments, The 2012 Cisco Global Cloud Networking Survey suggests.
The survey, which measured 1,300 IT professionals’ adoption of cloud services in 13 countries while examining potential challenges to their cloud migrations, also reveals that nearly 73pc of respondents said they feel confident with enough information to begin their private or public cloud deployments.
However, 27pc feel they have more knowledge about how to play Angry Birds than what they need to do to migrate their company’s network and applications to the cloud.
In what the survey deems as a clear sign that many IT organisations are still considering and planning cloud migrations, 24pc of IT decision makers said that over the next six months they are more likely to see a UFO, a unicorn or a ghost before they see their company’s cloud migration starting and finishing.
Without proper processes and planning, 31pc of respondents said they could train for a marathon in a shorter period of time than it would take to migrate their company’s applications to the cloud.
A majority (76pc) of respondents predict their cloud applications are likely to be breached, yet 24pc believe they are more likely to be struck by lightning than have a third party breach their cloud applications.
Cloud deployments expected to increase by end of the year
At the moment, only 5pc of respondents have been able to migrate at least half of their total applications to the cloud. By the end of 2012, that number is expected to significantly increase, as 20pc will have deployed more than half of their total applications to the cloud, according to the survey.
In order to successfully move more applications to the cloud, respondents cited a cloud-ready network (37pc) as the biggest infrastructure element required for further cloud deployments, followed by a virtualised data centre (28pc) or a service-level agreement from a cloud service provider (21pc).
During the cloud migration process, data protection security (72pc) has been cited as the top network challenge or roadblock responsible for preventing a successful implementation of cloud services, followed by availability/reliability of cloud applications (67pc), device-based security (66pc), visibility and control of applications across the WAN (60pc) and overall application performance (60pc).
