Fundamental barriers to adoption of cloud technologies still exist according to members of a panel session at the Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit in London organised by the 451 Group.

In a discussion on 'Who is buying cloud and why?'representatives from Bank of America and the BBC were asked for a view on where they were on the cloud adoption curve.

Rupert Brown, Principal Architect for Bank of America Merrill Lynch said that when it came to finding true innovation in the cloud, users had to actively go out and seek it and said IBM, HP and Oracle were 'paralysed for innovation.'

Brown said IBM was using the same (unnamed) small supplier that he himself was using in Bank of America. 'IBM have been insourcing the same small supplier that we've been using,' he said.

Brown said: 'We have 1,600 frontline systems. When we are working on re-architecting them across the world we want the same cloud developments that we don't want to have to change. Inside the cloud we need the 'appliancing' of the delivery of data. That's not happening.'

Also on the same panel, Paul Boyns, Head of IT strategy at the BBC Technology Division admitted that many parts of his business didn't know how to buy cloud services. 'The BBC is agnostic and works through partners. We are working on a policy document for purchasing cloud services.'

Boyns said one of his key requirements was looking for an application development 'cookie cutter' ÔÇô what he called an 'application development platform with a cloud back end.'

In answer to a question about cloud skills Boyns said: 'There is an immaturity in provision and smaller organisations have smarter thinking.'

FOCUS magazine's Issue 15 'Touching the Cloud' included an in-depth section on the barriers and benefits of Cloud adoption. It includes a Devil's dictionary of a few terms that were being over-used and abused. We listed the definition of SLA as: An arrangement under which people who don't know that they want have it delivered by people who can't understand what is being asked for.

Content Streaming at the BBC - Paul Boyns answers questions on the BBC's data center strategy.