Monitis: Cloud Monitoring Blog

2020. I’ll have slowed down a bit physically, and hopefully I’ll be a bit wiser about life, but by then, one thing’s for sure – accessing software via cloud computing, versus the desktop, will be the standard.

This is the finding of a new survey by the Pew Research Center. The organization asked IT pros and other stakeholders around the world questions about technology, and the vast majority of respondents, nearly three-quarters, said that by 2010, most people will not use software on a general-purpose PC to do their work. Instead, they predict that application developers will develop for smart phones and other companies that provide Internet-based applications, rather than PC operating systems.

But just as we’re seeing today, 2020’s computing infrastructure will include a mix of private clouds, public clouds and internal servers.

Despite the sunny outlook, the availability of broadband, the ability of diverse systems to work together, security, privacy and quality of service were all issues that those polled cited. Others polled worried that vesting the majority of their data in a few large companies that constitute most of the cloud, such as Google, would limit the openness, innovation and creativity of the Internet.

Ten years from now, I have no doubt that doing business on the cloud will be more common than it is today – and that it’ll even be preferable (even in a hybrid environment). But what I’m even more sure of is how the need for monitoring of cloud-based apps and services will continue and grow. As more companies put their faith in cloud providers, they’ll also recognize the need to make sure those providers deliver.

I read about the new Harvey Nash CIO Survey 2010 in which there were some stark differences in the findings for European and American CIOs. One big dividing line was that even though U.S. CIOs are paid a lot more and have more responsibility, they are less satisfied with their jobs than the CIOs across the Atlantic. German and Scandinavian CIOs scored much higher on job satisfaction.

Before I even got into the article, which was an interview with Harvey Nash, the survey project leader, I knew the explanation behind that finding: 2009 was a rough year, and American CIOs had their budgets cut – yet were asked to do a lot more. Who could blame them for being dissatisfied?

But what struck me most of all about the survey results was that European CIOs were less likely to use SaaS and cloud services than their Yankee cousins. I say it struck me because the Europeans, on many fronts, often embrace technology faster than Americans and deploy it for the public good, for example, hi-speed trains and smart credit cards.

According to Nash, one explanation is that folks who were experimenting with this model aren’t shifting their entire infrastructures to the cloud. U.S. CIOs, although nervous about the Cloud in the beginning, have come to accept it. “We spoke to more small and mid-cap CIOs in the U.S., and many of them were more open to it than the larger companies,” Nash said.

That could have a lot to do with the U.S. emerging from the recession faster than, say, the U.K. and continental Europe. In his survey, Nash asked companies, “How are you approaching the new year?” and found that “the further you went across Europe to the East, the less likely the CIOs were to be using SaaS. But having said that, I don’t think it means they are not doing it, they are just doing it at a more cautious rate.”

Although I have no doubt German, French and English IT executives will eventually embrace the Cloud on a more robust level, I think Euro CIOs are plenty concerned about cloud security, just as their American counterparts were and continue to be.

One way to deal with those concerns is to approach the Cloud in stages – leave sensitive data and super-important apps on your internal server. Another way is to use SaaS (I know, I know, if you Europeans aren’t ready for SaaS, that’s OK.) and cloud-based monitoring solutions to make sure your data is safe and apps are running smoothly.

There are always options!