The Corollary to Hoff’s Law

“Security” concerns continue to top every cloud computing related survey. This could be because, well, CIOs and organizations in general are concerned about security. It could be because the broader question of control over the infrastructure – including security – is never proffered as a reason for reluctance to jump into the fray known as cloud computing.

• Forty-nine percent of survey respondents from enterprises and 51 percent from small and medium-size businesses cited security and privacy concerns as their top reason for not using cloud computing. – Survey: Security Concerns Hinder Cloud Computing Adoption, NetCentric Security, December 2009
  
• In a survey of 312 IT professionals, Unisys found that just over half of them cited security and data privacy as the key concerns around cloud computing. – Security Key Concern in Cloud Computing, Unisys Survey Finds
  
• According to Forrester Research’s Cloud Computing study 2009, about 44 per cent of large enterprises are interested in building an internal cloud. “Enterprises are more attracted to private cloud compared to public, due to security concerns about mission critical applications and data,” Kumar [Sushil Kumar, Oracle’s vice president of Product Strategy and Business Development System Management Product Group] noted. -- And finally Oracle is on Cloud

Interestingly, IDC’s latest Cloud Survey (December 2009) actually seems to show that broader “control” issues are coming to light. 76% of respondents indicated that “not enough ability to customise” was a challenge in their quest to adopt cloud computing models.

Visibility, while also a concern, can also be a side-effect of control. If you have control over the infrastructure you also have visibility. It could be argued that providers could enable the means by which customers could have visibility into infrastructure, especially the network, by exposing reporting but the truth is most network infrastructure solutions are not capable of providing the isolation of data required (they are not inherently mutli-tenant) and thus it’s not as easy as it might sound.