Cloud computing is becoming more and more the trend of the decade. In a survey by RightScale entitled “State of the Cloud Report”, 930 executives suggest that business leaders are pushing cloud-based solutions. On the other hand, the survey suggests that IT departments are not as open to this shift, especially considering the risks involved in dealing with public cloud adoption. Businesses are motivated by the numerous benefits of cloud computing, such as increased agility and the logistical potentials of cloud-based applications and processes. Nonetheless, there seems to be a glaring distance between the perceptions of cloud-based computing for these two parties. The question remains: who will lead the cloud-computing movement?

The RightScale survey is not as conclusive regarding their findings. IT leaders are also seeing the need to adapt to this trend. However, leading the development also implies that they will level up their roles from being handlers into brokers and advisors of the whole movement.

There is positivity in the air. IT anxiety about cloud security has decreased, down from 47 percent, underlining it as a significant backlog in 2014 to 41 percent in 2015. Because of this, IT leaders have increased its focus on public cloud. 28 percent of central IT respondents have reported public cloud as the top priority in 2015, a very significant increase from 18 percent in 2014.

Questions on who will lead the shift also raised some doubts on the part of the enterprise regarding the potential leveling up of roles with regards to their IT departments. Some of the details in the survey point out to this tension. 57 percent say IT will take a leadership role in selecting private clouds. 56 percent of IT managers state that IT should be deciding or advising on which applications should go to cloud, versus 44 percent of business types.

This condition has bred a shadowy territory in IT, created by the caution of business owners in harnessing their on-site resources. Because IT departments still show a hesitance to fully engage in cloud computing, and because businesses are pushing up their processes despite this hesitation, outside online services have entered the scene to compensate for this. At present, most cloud computing processes function in a hybrid form. Online services and partial aspects of the cloud computing solutions can be considered to be the primary mode of operation today.

The survey supports this scenario. Most enterprises only run less than a fifth of their total application portfolio in the cloud. Moreover, 55 percent of enterprises report that a significant part of their existing application portfolio is actually not in the cloud. Non-cloud aspects and applications, however, run in cloud-friendly environments. This “hybridity” is seen to remain as the most efficient strategy, while leadership is still at question.

So who will lead this movement? We can only expect a push-pull in the coming months, but the hybrid nature will most likely remain.

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Photo by Ars Electronica.