Joint report on the Benefits and Challenges of Adopting Cloud Technology published

Following on from a combined study by NUI Galway and Lero (the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre) on the benefits and challenges of cloud computing, Drs. Kieran Conboy and Lorraine Morgan will present a keynote speech entitled Business Transformation through the Cloud: Fact or Fiction? at the upcoming Enterprise Technology World Summit, which takes place in the Croke Park Conference Centre on 18th June.  The research, which received widespread national and international coverage, consisted of an evidence-based study across a number of Irish-based organisations. The study found that companies embracing cloud technologies are more innovative and like to work collaboratively, both internally and with customers.  The use of cloud technology can also save on time taken to roll out new applications, and administration time when the systems are operational. Additionally, the move away from perpetual capital expenditure to operational expenditure was also seen as a significant cost benefit, especially in the current economic environment.  However, the report also identified a number of barriers to businesses using cloud services, including security and privacy issues, bandwidth and connectivity and perceptions of the word ’cloud’, which can spark a negative reaction. The study also found that convincing IS/IT management and employees to use the cloud was another barrier to bringing in the services to businesses successfully.  The report highlighted IT managers in particular as worried that the introduction of such cloud services, which can streamline internal processes, could lead to their jobs becoming obsolete. Read the full report here.

Drs. Conboy and Morgan have presented some of the findings from the report at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2013) and the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2013).