Cloud contracts stalled by existing support & maintenance

A survey of 200 IT directors within large enterprise organisations has found that IT directors are worried about the potential management headaches of cloud computing.

The Vanson Bourne survey commissioned by 2e2 reported that 71% of IT directors are concerned about the potential management complexity cloud services will bring.

Current maintenance, support and managed service contracts act as a barrier to moving IT services into the cloud among 57% of IT directors surveyed. Such contracts would lead to delays in them deploying some cloud services.

According to 2e2, often organisations will have three-year to five-year fixed-term contracts for in-house software or hardware maintenance and support. Many will be worried that if they migrate to a cloud model now they will still be committed to legacy contracts that they will not utilise.

If cloud adoption is to be accelerated, this problem must be addressed by suppliers and service providers. With the rate of change increasing, and new delivery and financial models coming to the fore, a more flexible approach to contracts needs to emerge.

Nathan Marke, CTO at 2e2, said: "By and large, the cloud concept is understood. The concern now is how to make it work for the business and how to manage cloud-based services once they are implemented."