What Do Midmarket CIOs Think About the Cloud?
Cloud Thoughts
Cloud computing is a hot topic among solution providers today. But what do their customers think of cloud-based technology? We asked six midmarket CIOs at the recent Midsize Enterprise Summit West conference in San Antonio their thoughts.
Here's what they had to say:
Randy Scadden
IT Engineer
Idaho Technologies
Salt Lake City
"[We're doing] nothing. We do a lot of business with the Department of Defense and there are regulations that prohibit things we could do in the cloud. But Google comes to mind as something that is interesting if there were no data security concerns."
Kelly Irwin
Director of IT
Drilling Info
Austin, Texas
"I'm not sticking data in a place I can't control. And the cost is not there yet either. I think it's cheaper to do it yourself. If you're just starting up it might be the way to go, but not for an established [company]."
Henry Chace
CIO
Burns & Levinson LLP
Boston
"We're actively pursuing [cloud]. I speak about it. I write about it. We're introducing it in our organization. All our mail, we use Mimecast software. We're looking to move documents to the cloud. We're looking at Docunet in Minnesota."
Liangfu Wu
Director of information Services
Village of Downers Grove
Downers Grove, Ill.
"We're definitely looking at it. We've looked at Google Apps and Postini and Microsoft's [cloud solutions]."
David Wieczorek
Network Manager, Network Services
Loyola University of Chicago
Chicago
"We have a hosted application. We've looked at more, but it wasn't economically appealing to us at the moment."
Todd Spencer
Chief Administrative Officer
Flambeau Inc.
Baraboo, Wis.
"We have payroll and HR systems in the cloud. We're not interested in anything else for the future. I want control and we don't have the need for it. Once we have a need, once our current storage capacity [is full], maybe we'll look at something then."