IT Taps Outside Experts to Handle Cloud Complexity

As cloud computing deployments become a bigger part of mainstream IT environments, the complexity of those environments is starting to become a major challenge, according to a new survey of 397 IT professionals in the United States and United Kingdom. Conducted by the market research firm Vanson Bourne on behalf of Sungard Availability Services, a provider of IT services, the survey shows that a large number of IT organizations are struggling with implementing multiple cloud services. Nearly three-fourths of the respondents report bringing in additional external support to implement cloud solutions. Just as significantly, the survey finds that many application workloads that were initially deployed in the cloud are moved back onto physical servers and that a third of the respondents are already looking to consolidate the number of cloud services they use. All in all, the survey makes it clear that rather than eliminating the need for solution providers, the rise of the cloud is actually creating more demand for their services than ever. Here's a look at key findings from the study.