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Cloud Computing: Not Innovative Enough? What if the Innovation Could Double?
A joint report from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) surveyed cloud users to find which issues are causing them the most problems or concerns with the cloud.
The results of that survey found the following top 10 ranked challenges:
- Government regulations keeping pace with the market
- Exit strategies
- International data privacy
- Legal issues
- Contract lock in
- Data ownership and custodian responsibilities
- Longevity of suppliers
- Integration of cloud with internal systems
- Credibility of suppliers
- Testing and assurance
Greg Grocholski, international president of the ISACA, commented that “One of the most interesting findings is that governance issues recur repeatedly on the list of the top 10 concerns.” Nothing too surprising with this list.
But the CSA/ISACA report also asked users about whether they felt that the cloud is innovative. And that part of the survey has generated some discussion.
The report found that 43 percent think that cloud vendors are moderately innovative and 33 percent said that cloud vendors show a lot of innovation, while 24 percent felt that cloud vendors were not so innovative.
To me, that doesn’t sound too bad — 76 percent see cloud vendors as being innovative with only a little less than a quarter that don’t. I’d guess that the numbers would be skewed significantly in the opposite direction if the question was instead about how traditional vendors of on-premise software are doing.
But David Linthicum takes the view that the 24 percent who feel that cloud vendors aren’t innovative enough are on to something. In an InfoWorld blog, Linthicum comments on the results of the report, saying that “The core problem is that most cloud technology providers believe what they do is innovative. To them, that means adopting the strategies of the market leaders, replicating their features and APIs (call for call), and hyping the market… It’s not good for the cloud industry to seem so old and tired at such a young age.”
Possibly. But considering the dramatic change in people’s perception about software that’s been brought about by cloud computing, it seems hard to imagine what the world of software would look like if cloud vendors were able to double the amount of innovation they bring to their products. Then again, maybe we should imagine it.
