Eighty six per cent of finance sector CIOs believe cloud computing to be over-hyped. That’s according to research conducted by SunGard and Vanson Bourne among 100 UK CIOs, which also found that 78 per cent agree the move to the cloud is no different from past major IT transitions.

The biggest challenges the CIOs have faced throughout their technology careers have been keeping data secure and resilient, cost-cutting while maintaining or increasing service levels, and the logistics of moving IT to new platforms. These are the exact same challenges that they are facing today, post-cloud, showing how the technology has not impacted upon the key issues CIOs, and finance sector companies, are struggling with.

“The research clearly shows that while the IT landscape may have changed, CIOs’ concerns have not,” comments Keith Tilley, managing director UK and executive vice president Europe at SunGard Availability Services. “Businesses are looking to exploit the cloud’s potential, but they’re not willing to give up the security or resilience of their data. And as data continues to grow at an alarming rate, the pressure on CIOs to ensure it’s always available to the organisation will only increase, regardless of the platform on which businesses’ data is delivered or stored.”

IT vendors must do a better job in convincing CIOs of their ability to support customers in their move to the cloud. According to the findings, finance sector CIOs are calling for cloud providers to demonstrate greater clarity and visibility in their capabilities in the areas of data protection (79 per cent), data security (74 per cent) and pricing (44 per cent).

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