In a new IDC Energy Insights survey 74 percent of utilities indicated that public cloud is their dominant, long-term platform strategy to meet IT needs. The 2014 CloudView Survey study provides context for understanding why cloud remains an area of heightened attention at the highest levels of utility organizations.
Other key findings of the survey include:
- 87 percent of utilities recognize the value of cloud services to provide better business continuity and disaster recovery than traditional technology;
- 82 percent of utilities consider total cost of ownership as the single most important consideration for choosing a cloud service;
- "IT skillsets not up to speed with new cloud standards/methodologies/topologies" is the most difficult management challenge utilities face in terms of their cloud strategies;
- 74 percent of utilities believe they will need a third-party professional services firm for expertise to build a public cloud strategy;
- 63 percent of utilities indicate that ceding control to a cloud provider is a barrier to their organization's adoption of cloud;
- 76 percent of utility survey respondents recognize that cloud providers can offer better security than that offered by their own organization's IT security team.
