Cloud Wake-Up Call: Worldwide Survey Shows User Dissatisfaction

Poor Performance Creates Opportunity For Service Providers

Rapid worldwide cloud adoption is creating a high level of dissatisfaction from customers concerned with poor performance and security protection, as well as lack of remediation, according to a study commissioned by Alcatel-Lucent.

’We all know security concerns have been a big barrier slowing cloud acceptance by IT. But, performance came up as a higher concern than security in this study,’ said Cindy Bergevin, head of application enablement and cloud solution marketing at Alcatel-Lucent.

The survey also found that Google beat Amazon as the most trusted cloud provider service on a worldwide basis. In the U.S., Microsoft was the most trusted provider. The survey, by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, questioned almost 4,000 IT decision-makers in the U.S., U.K., France, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

U.S. Businesses Rapidly Moving To the Cloud

In the U.S., 41 percent of businesses and organizations said they had a presence in the cloud through an outsourced cloud provider, with 52 percent saying they planned to move some resources to the cloud within three years.

India had the highest level of cloud adoption, with 47 percent of organizations on board and 58 percent considering the move.

Adoption Of Mission Critical Apps In the Cloud Grows

In the U.S., more than 80 percent of IT decision makers said they were moving, or considering moving, some applications to the cloud.

But, only 40 percent said they were moving, or considering moving, mission-critical apps to the cloud.

Cloud Providers Get Poor Grades From Users

Less than half of decision makers surveyed said they were very satisfied with support, value or performance of their cloud providers, according to the survey.

Satisfaction levels, while low in the U.S. and India, were far higher than the global average.

Users Cite High Outage Frequency

Almost 40 percent of organization surveyed said they had experienced outages, either frequent or infrequent.

This percentage of downtime was slightly below the worldwide average of 40 percent.

Poor Remediation Practices Cited

In the U.S., 36 percent of organizations said they received no help from cloud providers when SLAs were not upheld.

"This suggests potential opportunity for cloud providers who are willing to offer guarantees," the survey said.

Globally, the average reached 28 percent.

Poor Provider Performance Top Concern

Less than 50 percent of IT decision-makers from businesses and organizations in the U.S. said they were very satisfied with providers in terms of support services, value and performance.

Almost 30 percent said performance needs the most improvement, ahead of security concerns, which are usually seen as the most important concern for businesses.

Globally, Google Tops Amazon As Most Trusted

Google is the most trusted cloud provider at 71 percent, while Amazon Web Services was the least trusted by decision makers, at 57 percent. The global average for trust in service providers was 47 percent.

In the U.S., Microsoft Azure was the highest trusted, at 73 percent.

Microsoft Judged Most Likely To Win Business

In the U.S., 30 percent of IT decision makers said Microsoft was most likely to win their business.

Another 20 percent of responders said AT&T stood the best chance, while 16 percent listed Verizon.

Another 34 percent listed other companies, which included Google, IBM, Amazon, Rackspace, Sprint and Salesforce.com.

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