IDC Introduces the Trust Perception Index, Measuring Trust Perceptions for the Top Six Cloud Providers

As organizations take steps to ensure that their technology vendors can serve as trusted ecosystem partners, they increasingly emphasize the critical importance of Trust metrics, often making them important components of request for proposals (RFPs). To help technology buyers and vendors better measure trust perception, International Data Corporation (IDC) created its Trust Perception Index earlier this year, leveraging a Future of Trust Survey of 1,011 leaders and decision makers in 12 countries and regions to identify the perceived strengths and weaknesses of their cloud providers.

This outcomes-based measurement tool empowers organizations to measure their trust positions against peer companies. It helps identify perceived strengths and weaknesses, highlights differences between those who bought and those who did not buy for any given organization, and offers guidance on how organizations can maintain and increase their trust positions. IDC applied the Trust Perception Index to the top six cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers – IBM Cloud, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Rackspace Cloud. Using end user trust perception survey responses to measure four areas of the IDC Trust Framework – security, privacy, compliance, and ESG – IDC calculated final scores for each provider. Key findings include:

• IBM Cloud emerged as the Trust Leader – it was comparatively strong in Privacy, Compliance, and ESG.
• Rackspace’s Trust Perception Score for Security was highest among the six cloud providers.
• The most frequently cited weaknesses across all cloud providers were configuration of controls, configuration management, data retention, erasure, disclosure according to privacy regulations, access to independent audit reports, and transparency on ESG initiatives.

“The IDC Trust Perception Index is intended to provide actionable guidance for companies seeking to improve or maintain their trust position relative to their marketplace peers,” said Grace Trinidad, research director for IDC’s of Future of Trust research practice. “The conceptual model that informs this index is based on a rich set of potential offerings in Security, Privacy, Compliance, and ESG that, as revealed through this and other research conducted at IDC, are critical for establishing Trust.”

Learn more about the Trust Perception Index and the detailed trust perception assessment of the top six IaaS providers in the IDC presentation, The IDC Trust Perception Index: Measuring the Four Foundations of Trust (Security, Privacy, Compliance, and ESG) for the Top IaaS Providers (IDC # US49817122).