Motivated by security and compliance concerns, a majority of IT executives believe it’s time for a crackdown on “rogue” use of public cloud services in their enterprise, according to the recent 2013 PMG Cloud Sprawl Survey.
The survey of 234 North American corporate IT professionals found growing concerns over the unauthorized use of the public cloud by business units within the enterprise. The services of greatest concern to the respondents were public cloud storage (70 percent), cloud synchronization (68 percent) and cloud-based collaboration applications (53 percent).
Specific cloud services or applications IT has prevented or limited enterprise access to include social media sites (66 percent), Skype (61 percent), Dropbox (59 percent) and Google Drive (40 percent). Sixty-four percent of those surveyed say much of the increased usage of cloud solutions has been driven by the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend.
The pattern of unauthorized usage of cloud services seems to be on the rise despite the fact that IT says the vast majority (89 percent) of employees understand the need for data security. Today, 54 percent of corporate IT professionals surveyed say their organizations have a policy in place regarding the use of public cloud storage services.
However, 43 percent of those surveyed admit to being only “somewhat effective” in educating business users on the pitfalls of the public cloud. Twenty-eight percent of IT pros say they are not effective in educating business users on the downside of using public cloud solutions, 20 percent say they are effective and 10 percent are not sure how effective they are.
“Cloud services will continue to expand within companies — in fact this study found 38 percent of IT respondents turn to the cloud because it offers faster deployment,” said Joe LeCompte, principal at PMG. “Savvy IT departments are focusing on finding better ways to offer enterprise-grade cloud services to internal users as a way to stem cloud sprawl and safeguard corporate information.”
CLO Inside Track: IT managers increasingly are on the hot seat to rein in unsanctioned public cloud use within the enterprise, while still responding to employees’ need to gain access to popular – and productive – new applications. But face it: enterprises either cannot – or will not – deny all public cloud access. That means IT departments must find ways to ensure security and compliance with regard to the enterprise’s critical information assets, while giving employees the must-have cloud applications they demand.
Eventually, companies will gravitate to a hybrid cloud approach, but it’s critically important that IT and business executives plan where they are going and how to get there. The good news: 72 percent of the IT professionals say employees are willing to use corporate installed cloud solutions and 82 percent believe the volume of cloud procurement will rise over the next two years. That suggests that when it comes to cloud sprawl, IT professionals still have a slim window during which to lead, follow, or get out of the way.
(Complete findings from the 2013 PMG Cloud Sprawl Survey, a blind survey of 234 North American corporate IT professionals conducted in March of 2013, are available at www.pmg.net/cloud2013.)
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