Mojtaba Akbari, head of IT at the K Club
CIOs and other C-level managers can contribute to new research that aims to measure the perceived challenges and barriers of cloud services for SMEs.
The survey is in two parts: one for IT users and the other for CIOs, CTOs, IT managers or other senior executives in an organisation. The surveys are open until Friday 22 June and can be accessed online.
The survey is being carried out by Mojtaba Akbari, who is head of IT at the K Club golf course and resort, as part of his research for DIT.
“We have seen that cloud has been a huge fuss during the last couple of years but when it comes to SMEs, they seem to be very conservative regarding the migration to the cloud,” said Akbari.
“The main reason that I am conducting this research is to find out the major barriers that keep SMEs away from cloud. My intuition is that due to the vague definition of the cloud by the industry, it is not well understood by SMEs – especially those with a different core business than IT-related sectors. Additionally, security and privacy seems to be another big concern.”
Akbari said the research will take several steps: the first is to review current challenges to adoption using the survey findings, and to identify concerns around moving to the alternative way of providing IT services through the cloud.
He then plans to design and deploy a live pilot system in which several small and medium enterprises will participate, in order to test the delivery of various applications over a wide area network.
Finally, outcomes from the test phase will be reviewed using log evaluations and reports, as well as through the qualitative information being captured in the surveys. Akbari said the results will help in analysis and evaluations that will be carried out to identify up to what degree the experience and built infrastructure is cost-effective and sustainable, as well as highlighting possible drawbacks.
Akbari hopes to be able to analyse and publish the results of the survey as a white paper. This document will also include results of the proposed and developed infrastructure, evaluating potential benefits and gains. Akbari said he intends to present a summary of the paper’s findings at various IT conferences and summits.
