Majority of UK businesses still not ready for cloud migration
New research commissioned by technology services firm Reconnix has found that 82 percent of UK IT leaders do not believe they are fully ready to make the move to Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers, due to a shortage of in-house skills.
Only 10 percent of the 100 IT decision makers involved believed they were ready, whilst a further 8 percent had already migrated or were in the process of migration.
Just seven percent of respondents were confident of having an in-house team capable of managing an IaaS environment, compared to 36 percent who believed they had most skills in-house and 59 percent believed they had some of the skills required or did not know.
Steve Nice, CTO at Reconnix, said: "There’s a very clear desire for businesses to move applications away from traditional environments and towards Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers, however a lack of adequate skills seem to be holding back many IT departments from making this move. It’s natural for businesses to err on the side of caution, but this conservative approach can mean that many are missing out on the transformative benefits of the cloud".
In terms of providers, Microsoft Azure was acknowledged as the most trusted, being chosen by 36 percent of respondents. IBM’s SmartCloud came second with 22 percent, followed by Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, both with 14 percent.
"The prominence of Azure and IBM in IT buyers minds is surprising, especially considering how far ahead AWS is, both technically and in terms of market share," explained Nice. "IT departments not used to buying cloud services can sometimes not be aware of the difference in levels of performance between IaaS providers and it can be tempting to choose a trusted name".
Cost was also identified as a key factor, cited as both the biggest motivator (32 percent) and the biggest barrier (30 percent) to migration. Other motivators included flexibility (30 percent) and increased computer power (18 percent).
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