How Public Cloud Providers Rain On Users

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Forrester Research released the results of a study Tuesday that examines the relationships between existing cloud users and their primary cloud services providers. The report, "Is Your Cloud Provider Keeping Secrets," includes forecasts of a bright future for the global public cloud market even as it uncovers prevalent problems that can serve as guideposts for CIOs and IT staff.

In April, Forrester forecast that the global public cloud market would reach $191 billion by 2020, from $53 billion in 2013.

The study released Tuesday evaluated the data and human elements missing from "commodity" public cloud services. It was funded by iland, a cloud services provider, and is based on a survey of 275 infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals in the US, the UK, and Singapore conducted in April 2015. Survey respondents are those involved in the selection of cloud providers and the support issues with them. Seven in ten (70%) of respondents have been using the cloud operationally for over a year. In what may reflect a pervasive practice, 73% said they were involved with more than just one cloud provider.

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The majority of respondents (60%) said they were delaying cloud adoption and expansion plans. This seems counterintuitive from a business standpoint. Why is this slowdown occurring?

Respondents cited a number of concerns how their cloud providers did business, including a lack of operational transparency, access to compliance information, and support issues, as the causes of the delay in extending cloud adoption.

Compliance issues were an area of dissatisfaction for a large number of respondents. Three quarters of the executives surveyed are responsible for verifying data compliance via audit. Yet, compliance concerns are a barrier to cloud expansion for 63% of respondents.

This is no trivial issue. Fifty-five percent of respondents whose companies require compliance information said that implementing the proper controls in order to achieve compliance was their top challenge. Roughly the same number are finding it difficult to understand the level of compliance their provider offers, especially getting the provider documentation necessary to fulfill an audit.

Survey respondents indicated that they receive incomplete metadata about their cloud workloads, including compliance status, performance data, historical information, security data, and billing and cost metrics. Respondents are dealing with to this situation by relying on tools provided by their cloud provider (41%), or by making new cloud purchase decisions that prioritize transparency (39%).

What we seem to have here is a failure to communicate. Users want better information about their cloud usage and data storage. Also, over half of respondents (52%) were not happy with the overall support process from their providers. This was due to a variety of factors, including slow response time, and the lack of human support.

A CIO or IT manager has to consider how a cloud experience may fail. The Forrester report highlights negative experiences that some users have encountered with their providers while trying to get real work done. By checking the kinds of services a provider offers before committing to them, problems may be solved before they ever occur.

Editor's Note: This article was updated with additional information on July 1.