The South East is Cloud Ready!

HCS Business Solutions, in association with the South Eastern Regional Chambers, recently conducted a survey about Cloud Computing and the perceptions surrounding it amongst businesses in the South East. The survey was distributed to Chamber members across Waterford, Wexford, Clonmel, Carlow and Kilkenny. Check out our findings.

The findings reported that the majority of businesses were not only familiar with the concept of Cloud computing, but would consider using some form of cloud services.  Only 4% of respondents had never heard of Cloud computing.

Based on the respondents knowledge of Cloud computing the most important perceived benefit of using cloud services were:
1) it requires no capital up front investment
2) it cuts company costs
3) it allows staff to collaborate and share more information

Despite the positivity surrounding cloud services, many respondents expressed concerns about certain aspects of adopting the cloud.  Across the region 85% of respondents stated that reliability was “very important” or “a showstopper” for them.  Whereas over three quarters expressed security as a very important or show stopping concern in adopting the cloud.

While all of the respondents have broadband facilities, their broadband speed varies considerably with 10% of companies having a broadband speed of less than 2MB, while the majority of respondents (29.3%) have a broadband speed of 4 to 8 MB.  However, despite the variations in broadband facilities, almost half of the businesses (43%) were confident that their broadband connection was reliable enough to support cloud services to their business.

According to Neil Phelan “The premise of this regional survey was to test the waters amongst businesses about their perception of the cloud, their knowledge of the services and to unearth their main concerns about implementing a cloud strategy.”

“Although some questions arise around challenges to adopting cloud services - security, speed and reliability will inevitably remain valid concerns amongst businesses.  However, we do believe that in time companies not just in the South East of Ireland, but globally, will regard cloud based services for businesses as the norm.  Cloud computing will give users a more reliable, remote and transparent IT service resulting in greater uptime and more business stability, which in these tough times is crucial.”

For a copy of the survey results call HCS Business Solutions on 051-595200 or email

 

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