European IT Pros Less Likely to Use Cloud Than US Peers
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!