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By Michael Neubarth
CIOs are between a rock and a hard place. Their datacenters are running out of capacity and they have no budget, yet information is exploding and they are charged with innovating and improving business processes. "Do more with less" is the mantra.
Surveys show CIOs looking to cloud computing as a savior. However, it appears that faith in the cloud is more wishful thinking than reality, as interest in clouds does not seem to translate into adoption of clouds.
Moreover, as experts point out, the reality of cloud computing does not coincide with the hype. For many organizations, placing sensitive information in a public cloud is an option they will likely never choose.
CIO Crucible
Increased pressure on CIOs in the recessionary economy has been reported in many quarters. Deloitte's latest CIO survey, released in November 2009, found that, "Enabling business cost reduction is the number one priority for IT departments through 2010; however, for many organizations this will be done against a backdrop of falling budgets." The survey, said Deloitte, "highlights that IT organizations are under immense pressure to deliver more with less."
Similarly, CIO Magazine's latest survey of IT budgets and staffing "paints a bleak picture for the year ahead," as reported by Carolyn Johnson on CIO.com on February 12, 2010. The study, she said, showed that "the number of CIOs planning budget decreases continues to rise dramatically." As Johnson relates, CIOs surveyed reported cost-cutting measures that included budget cuts, hiring freezes, staff reductions, pay cuts, travel restrictions, and IT projects put on hold.
Information Week in its"2010 State of Enterprise Storage Survey" reported that its findings reflected "a grim financial picture." The February 2010 report describes an "alarming state of affairs" that has reached a "breaking point."
Information Week reports that, over the past year, "CIOs were forced to run much tighter ships, with capital expenditures postponed or put on hold. Forget introducing innovative storage technologies-or sometimes, even doing basic maintenance, despite the fact that many of our infrastructures are bursting at the seams."
Compared with a year ago, says the report, "more IT pros say they have insufficient budgets to meet business demands, insufficient tools for storage management, and insufficient storage resources for departmental and individual use."
For some, the report says, "the reality of stretched resources is sending a harsh wake-up call."
Enter the Cloud
Seeing the cloud as the antidote to their budget and capacity crunch is an idea that seems to have captivated CIOs, with the latest surveys showing cloud computing commanding a larger portion of CIO mindshare. In Gartner's 2010 CIO survey, for example, cloud computing rose to the number two spot in the list of CIO priorities, up from 16th place a year ago, and second to virtualization.
CIO.com's survey also saw more CIO's looking to the cloud. "With cost cutting top of mind," cio.com reported, "some CIOs are looking for alternative IT models; 38 percent of CIOs say they are more likely to consider on-demand services and SaaS as a result of the unfavorable economic condition."
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