Nearly half of senior executives will block cloud computing

The report, conducted by the non-profit IT Governance Institute (ITGI – ISACA's research affiliate), suggests that security is a key obstacle (47% of respondents) alongside concerns over privacy concerns (50%). Other inhibitors include the scale of existing legacy infrastructure investments (35%). On the other hand, of the executives who use or plan to use cloud computing for IT services, 60% were non-mission critical projects, but 40% also said they would trust the cloud for mission-critical IT services. Interestingly, ISACA international vice president Ken Vander Wal also notes that, according to the report, organisations are also actively employing outsourcing, with 93% fully or partially outsourcing some of their IT activities. "Emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and outsourcing, can be managed effectively by integrating good governance over IT," comments Wal. "Organisations need to adopt new service delivery models to stay competitive, and this is fuelling a strong commitment to enterprise IT governance across the C-suite," he adds. Meanwhile, the study also shows a correlation between the position of the head of IT in the enterprise's hierarchy and the pro-active nature of its IT department. Overall, 70% of respondents noted that the head of IT is a member of the senior management team, but this figure increases to 80% for those where IT has a proactive role. Wal's view: "Assessing the value of current investments, building consensus among stakeholders and mitigating risk with third-party providers all require a comprehensive governance framework for organisations to be sure they are doing the right things and doing things right." The 2011 study polled 834 executives from 21 countries, divided almost evenly between business executives (CEOs, CFOs and COOs) and IT executives (CIOs and heads of IT).