The Fear and "Phobia" of the Cloud and Cloud Computing

Abstract

Cloud computing is a rapidly evolving innovation that offers the potential for businesses to gain
competitive edge globally. With the advent of Cloud computing, organizations may easily port and render
their businesses, services and operations across the globe via the Internet. This huge possibility looks very
attractive, and increasingly many enterprises in the developed economies are beginning to think of how to
leverage this opportunity; with Cloud computing, services and data may be provided by shared computing
resources in scalable data centers and made accessible over the Internet. Nevertheless, there is still a
predominant and nagging fear (phobia) surrounding the adoption of the easy-to-manage offerings of the
Cloud computing technology, especially in developing countries like Nigeria.This paper gives a general
insight into Cloud computing and its history. It then attempts to investigate why businesses tend to shy
away from the use of the services which can/may be rendered in the Cloud. It further discusses the
prospects of extensively introducing and leveraging Cloud computing as a means of rendering distributed
business operations and services in a cost effective way especially in developing sectors of developing
economies like Nigeria where organizations and companies may not be all that economically buoyant to
own and build their own individual “silo technologies” to attend and solve crucial business needs. Finally
the paper suggests how to start overcoming the in-built and inherent resistive attitudes towards Cloud
computing.