Businesses looking to move into the cloud are too pre-occupied in cutting costs without having an accurate measure of whether savings had been made.
So claims research from service provider Easynet, which suggests less than a third of companies believe they can accurately measure the return on investment (ROI) derived from moving to the cloud. In fact, just 31 per cent think they have all the tools to do this.
Despite this, the survey found that most companies looking to move to the cloud were still citing cost savings as the key driver for the change.
Just over half (51 per cent) of respondents said that reducing spend on IT was the driving factor in their decision to move to the cloud and an even larger number said they expected cost savings to be the main benefit of embracing this delivery model.
This is in contrast to other recent research, which has emphasised agility and flexibility over cost when it came to factors that determined the move.
"CIOs must approach the cloud with a clear strategy in mind yet our study shows a worrying laissez-faire' attitude to investments organisations clearly believe that cloud can deliver, but our research shows they haven't understood the full implications," said Justin Fielder, chief technology officer (CTO) at Easynet Global Services.
"Planned properly, with the right success criteria determined in advance, the cloud can be an enabler of massive business transformation and success can be guaranteed. CIOs should treat this like any other investment by asking the right questions, consulting widely across the business, planning for every contingency and having a full understanding of the impacts, and hence ROI."
The ability to work away from the office also formed part of the decision to move, with almost half (45 per cent) of respondents saying they hoped to be able to connect to corporate networks from anywhere.
Some 800 CIOs from the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland were questioned as part of the research, which was carried out on Easynet's behalf by Vanson Bourne.
