A recent rash of downtime in major data centers highlights one of the main reasons only 15 percent of IT managers in a new Stratus Technologies-ITIC survey are implementing cloud computing projects: doubts about performance, redundancy and fault tolerance in cloud infrastructures.

The ‘IT Performance Trends Survey’ of nearly 300 IT professionals in industries ranging from construction to financial services to health care found that an overwhelming majority of the corporate respondents are concerned about data integrity and data access in cloud computing environments: some are outright skeptical.

"Putting all our eggs in one basket - a basket that we have limited control over and limited access to - is not high on our list of priorities," replied an IT manager at a financial firm with 5,000 desktops and 500 servers.

His was one of the blunter assessments of cloud computing, but it wasn't out of the survey's mainstream. Questions about basic operational issues dominated responses. Data integrity was a major concern for 83 percent of the respondents, as security remains a significant obstacle for cloud computing environments. Sixty three percent are concerned about latency/response times in cloud environments.

"As attractive a concept as cloud computing is, the survey results show that IT groups are being very hard-eyed about practical issues before they put serious resources into it," said ITIC Principal Laura DiDio. "They need to know that cloud environments are reliable and fault tolerant before entrusting them with strategic data and applications."

Closely related to data integrity were concerns about unscheduled downtime. More than half (52 percent) of respondents can't accept downtime for contracted services, and 43 percent want outclauses and penalties to discourage downtime.

http://www.stratus.com

•Date: 28th July 2009• Region: World •Type: Article •Topic: IT continuity
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