Colin Lacey, Unisys: Cloud Remains Top IT Priority for 2012

For second straight year, cloud computing tops the list of IT investments for coming year; cybersecurity and mobile/social computing tie for second

December 19, 2011

Fifty (50) percent of respondents to a recent Unisys online poll said that cloud computing is their top IT investment priority for 2012.

The poll, which drew 300 responses, was conducted on the unisys.com web site in September and October 2011.

This is the second straight year in which respondents to a Unisys poll named cloud as the chief priority for IT investments in the coming year. In a similar poll conducted in December 2010 and January 2011, 44 percent of 262 respondents said that cloud computing topped their IT priority list for 2011.

Other respondents to the September-October 2011 poll listed cybersecurity (21 percent), mobile/social computing (21 percent) and big data (8 percent) as their top 2012 IT priorities.

“Over the past two years cloud computing has moved into the mainstream of IT investment decisions,” said Colin Lacey, vice president, Data Center Services and Solutions, Unisys. “From the US Federal Government’s ‘cloud first’ policy to enterprise business units’ demands for greater IT responsiveness, business decision makers are embracing both private and public cloud computing models. They now see the cloud as a vital way to obtain IT services that enable them to provide solutions for clients and deliver competitive products to market quickly and cost-efficiently.”

Unisys advises clients interested in cloud to take a Hybrid Enterprise approach, integrating the cloud solution with existing IT resources and managing the integrated environment as a single entity. By doing so, they can preserve and capitalize on existing IT investments while avoiding “cloud in a corner” syndrome, where new cloud-based solutions are disconnected from existing IT resources, resulting in duplication of processes and higher operating costs.