Colt, Europe’s leading information delivery platform, today highlighted the growing concerns of CIOs about cloud privacy in a new study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Colt. This study, “Building A Roadmap To Cloud Computing” examines cloud computing adoption across Europe and reveals that CIOs are increasingly concerned about the location and privacy of data.
The study finds that many enterprises already have an advanced understanding of cloud computing services and the benefits of speed of implementation and elasticity of services. The rate of adoption of cloud services, however, is not uniform and varies between industries. Some vertical markets are now facing challenges with regulation, data location and variations in local legislation.
This is supported by research conducted by Colt in its own recent CIO research*. Colt found that regulation on security and control of customer data was listed by 54 per cent of European CIOs as a key challenge.
However, both Colt’s and Forrester Consulting’s research confirm that the market understanding of cloud computing is maturing and that cloud computing will be the most significant IT operating method by 2014.
“Regulations regarding security, control and privacy of data are complex and CIOs need to be certain that their service providers can navigate these rules,” said Steve Hughes, Principal Cloud specialist at Colt. “European businesses seeking to exploit the real benefits of cloud computing will need to send, share or store data across national borders. They can only achieve this by partnering with vendors who can operate locally and on a pan-European basis.”
According to Forrester Consulting, “Several cloud service providers combine the standardisation and consumption model of public clouds with a more local, dedicated, and secure management of enterprise data. Forrester calls these services “virtual private clouds”. In contrast to public cloud services, the more local virtual private cloud provider can predict where the data is and, in many cases, offer a higher level of service-level agreement (SLA).”
Notes to editors:
“Building A Roadmap To Cloud Computing”, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Colt”, May 2011. The survey is available to download at http://www.colt.net/uk/en/white-papers/index.htm.
*The Colt European CIO Cloud Survey was conducted amongst over 500 IT decision makers in companies with some level of familiarity with cloud computing in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Benelux. The survey is available to download at: http://www.colt.net/cio-research/
About Colt
Colt is Europe’s leading information delivery platform, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information. An established leader in delivering integrated computing and network services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers, Colt operates a 21-country, 35,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 39 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 17,000 buildings and 19 Colt data centres.
In 2010, the Colt Data Centre Services business was launched to deliver innovative high quality modular data centres which are rapid to deploy and power efficient.
Colt is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT). Information about Colt and its services can be found at www.colt.net.
For more information, please contact:
Colt press contacts
Thomas Andrews, Weber Shandwick
DDI: +44 (0) 207 067 0712
Mobile: +44 (0) 7806 558 245
Email: ColtUK@webershandwick.com
François d’Essertaux, Colt
DDI: +44 (0) 207 039 2953
Mobile: +44 (0) 7538 095 485
Email: francois.dessertaux@colt.net
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