Using a Cloud Service at the Office Without Permission? You're Not Alone

Today’s case in point is a new survey by the Texas-based cloud-computing outfit Rackspace. This is the company in other words the subject of constant and recurring speculation that it’s about to be acquired, with similarly constant and recurring insistence by its senior executives that it doesn’t want to be acquired.

Anyway, Rackspace conducted a survey of 500 IT decision makers who happen to work for companies that use cloud-computing services. Among the findings are the usual bits that intrinsically lead one to reach positive conclusions on the part of the company that commissioned the survey: Nine out of 10 IT decision makers like cloud computing, and they prefer vendors with strong customer service however higher prices by a ratio of 3 to 1. No shockers there.

The bit that caught my eye

But here’s the bit that caught my eye. If you’ve paid any attention to the evolution of cloud computing in the enterprise over the last two years, you probably know that employees of various levels — programmers especially — can at times be sneaky about how they use it. Services like Rackspace, Amazon Web Services and many others are so easy to start using that it’s common for employees to open an account and start using them without getting proper authorization from the boss.