A new study has found that IT complexity already existing within an organization is one barrier to implementing a cloud system.

NTT Europe recently completed a study that found 56 percent of CIOs and senior IT leaders see complexity of their own Information and Communications Technology (ICT) systems as the biggest barrier to their organization's enterprise wide adoption of the cloud, according to an article on Forbes.com.

The survey contends that cloud adoption continues to be tactical in nature as a result of the inordinate complexity of existing and legacy ICT platforms. Completed in April and May of this year in the United Kingdom, the study "Growing Pains In The Cloud, 300 CIOs Express Their Views About Barriers To Cloud Adoption" was completed by Vanson Bourne and included 300 interviews of CIOs and senior IT leaders from public and private organizations with 250+ employees.

While the study was completed in the UK, the findings are applicable to enterprises globally looking to use cloud computing to better align business and IT strategies. Fifty-nine percent of CIOs and IT leaders surveyed say that enabling alignment of business and IT strategies using cloud infrastructure is their No. 1 priority.

Key takeaways from the study include:

• Fifty-three percent said that launching new services and applications more quickly is a key request they receive from business units. In the transport and logistics sector four fifths (80%) of CIOs confirmed launching new services and applications is their most important business focus.
• Sixty percent of IT leaders are concerned that cloud providers don't appreciate how complex legacy ICT systems are, and fear migration to the cloud could fail. A common concern of respondents is how vendors tend to oversimplify their cloud solutions despite the inordinate complexity of ICT legacy platforms and systems.

Rackspace Builds a New Cloud for CERN
Rackspace is once again teaming up with CERN, this time to bolster its cloud computing capabilities.

CERN has tapped Texas-based Rackspace to help it build a hybrid cloud computing system, according to an article on TheWhir.com.

Central to the effort is OpenStack, the open source cloud operating system that has been dubbed the standard for cloud computing.

CERN is the place where physicists study nothing less than the very secrets of the origins of the universe, which they do in many ways, including but not limited to smashing particles together at high speed to see what emerges. All these experiments produce a huge amount of digital data - about 25 petabytes a year - that must be analyzed.

It's not the first time that Rackspace has worked with CERN Open Lab. Previously, the company helped the lab with a system that allowed certain computing workloads to "burst" into the Rackspace public cloud as needed. This time around, they're going to collaborate around the idea of tying up Rackspace's public and private cloud services with other OpenStack-based cloud systems that CERN already operates in its own data centers, the point being to get them working pretty seamlessly, and making the whole thing easier and less expensive to manage.

Oracle and NetSuite Unveil Cloud Computing Alliance
Two big IT players are combining forces to bring the cloud to small and midsize businesses.

Software companies Oracle and NetSuite announced an alliance to deliver cloud-based services to midsize business customers, the third tie-up unveiled this week by Oracle as it pushes further into services delivered over the Internet, according to Reuters.

The agreement will focus on integrating Oracle's software for human resources with NetSuite's services for enterprise resource planning and will be aimed at midsize companies, Oracle and NetSuite said.

"You shouldn't think of this as a date. You should think of this as us continuing to integrate our products closer and closer together," Oracle President Mark Hurd told analysts and reporters on a conference call. "Think of this almost as rolling thunder as opposed to an event."

NetSuite, in which Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison is a major shareholder, makes web-based software for small and midsize companies to manage their businesses and customers. Connecting their products gives the two technology companies new sales opportunities.

The partnership with NetSuite follows Oracle agreements announced earlier this week with cloud-computing leader Salesforce.com and top software maker Microsoft. Oracle wants to speed up its move into cloud computing, a fast-growing area of technology where the No. 3 software maker has fallen behind smaller rivals selling all-in-one solutions that are less expensive than Oracle's offerings.