Dow Jones CIO on Cloud Rights

If you are exploring – or already deeply entrenched in -- cloud computing initiatives at your organization, then you have probably seen the recent manifesto from the Gartner Global IT Council for Cloud Computing: Six Cloud Computing Rights (+ One Responsibility).  If you haven't checked it out, you'll want to do so right away. It is a much-needed resource for enterprises looking to make sense of the "scattered clouds" in today's computing forecast.

We had the chance to speak with Dean Del Vecchio, SVP CIO/CAO at Dow Jones and a member of the Gartner Global IT Council for Cloud Computing, to get further insight into why cloud computing guidelines are sorely needed. "Hopefully, it is a wake-up call to some providers that in order to grow their cloud offerings for companies like ourselves they will have to make some changes," says Del Vecchio. "They will have to commit to [service level agreements], for example."

Del Vecchio adds that the guidelines send a strong message to cloud vendors "that these are the issues holding back companies like ours from putting our trust and our data in their hands. What has been holding us up is the fact that we don't feel comfortable that security, policy, redundancy and recovery features are in place and that we will be able to deliver the same level of security and reliability [in the cloud] that we can achieve in-house."