Ninety Percent of IT Pros Using or Evaluating Cloud Likely to Calculate ROI According to New InformationWeek Reports Research

SAN FRANCISCO, March 7, 2012  /PRNewswire/ -- InformationWeek Reports (http://reports.informationweek.com), a service provider for peer-based IT research and analysis, released Cloud ROI Calculations, a new report featuring results from InformationWeek's latest Cloud ROI Survey. The report helps IT professionals quantify the costs of public, private and hybrid clouds vs. conventional IT.  More than 370 business technology professionals responded to the poll.

Research Summary: The 374 respondents to InformationWeek's 2012 Cloud ROI Survey are using more public cloud services across the board compared with when the survey fielded in April 2010, with software as a service posting the largest gains.

Findings: 

• 82% of our survey respondents have or expect a formal mandate or a preference to evaluate cloud computing as an option for any new IT services or systems.
• 60% are concerned or very concerned over the potential for runaway costs if cloud services scale up inappropriately, whether due to error, mismanagement or an attack such as DoS.
• 31% say it's highly likely they will comprehensively evaluate ROI for the expected lifespan of a cloud computing project; 54% of those likely to evaluate their return on investment will use a three- to five-year time period for comparison.
• 27% report incorporating time savings for business unit employees or IT staff has a high likelihood of being included in an ROI study regarding the business value of cloud computing.

The report author, Jonathan Feldman, serves as director of information technology services for a city in North Carolina.

For full access to the research data, members can download now: http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/5/8702/Cloud-Computing/research-cloud-roi-calculations.html?cid=rpt_press_rls

"Companies that cannot compare costs for public cloud services versus internal IT will be in rough shape once they build private clouds and adopt a hybrid setup," says Lorna Garey, content director of InformationWeek Reports. "And just avoiding cloud won't be an answer, if enterprises don't want a stark IT cost delta between them and startups."

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For more information:
Art Wittmann
VP & Managing Director, InformationWeek Reports
415-947-6361
awittmann@techweb.com

SOURCE UBM TechWeb