CIOs split on cloud data restrictions

Almost one in three Australian firms eyeing cloud computing are saddled with IT policies or requirements that ban data from going offshore, according to Telsyte.

The survey of 260 chief information officers found 29 percent have some kind of restrictions on data location, while 36 percent have no restrictions placed on them.

Of those most restricted are enterprises in the mining, financial services and government sectors.

The restrictions could be regulatory, addressing privacy concerns or "might be for perception or defensive reasons", senior analyst Rodney Gedda said. 

The least restricted in terms of data location are firms in property services, manufacturing and transport.

Overall, the survey found 35 percent of Australian enterprises had adopted some form of platform or infrastructure-as-a-service.

The most-used IaaS players are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Rackspace. The leader - whom Gedda would not disclose - has more than 50 percent of Australian IaaS users signed on.

Future Telsyte research aims to ascertain the impact that local IaaS players were having in winning business.

The survey results form part of Telsyte's Australian infrastructure and cloud computing market study for 2012.