Cognizant results suggest cloud and social media are still on most firms' 'to-do' lists

Most enterprises are still wary of cloud computing, social media and mobile business, judging by the latest results from IT services firm Cognizant.

The firm's latest full-year results show revenues up by 40 per cent, but only 10 per cent of its sales related to cloud, mobile or social media solutions, according to Cognizant UK managing director Sanjiv Gossain. He attributed his firm's improved revenue to a strategy around "customer service, flexibility and transparency".

"Although cloud has caught the imagination, and we are running several pilots with companies working out how they can benefit from the service, most still have concerns around security and data privacy," Gossain said.

"Even when we advise companies around how they can best leverage cloud technology many are still hesitant to take our advice. Once there are a few more case studies in this area and confidence increases, we will see the spend start to increase.

"With regard to mobile deployment, again we are advising a few customers in areas such as mobile access, security and setting up a distributed workforce, but take-up is very slow," he said.

"Similarly, there aren't a huge number of companies interested in developments in the social media space but we do see differences in requirements between different types of companies. Consumer-facing companies are looking to leverage their brands and communicate with many customers, while business-to-business companies are largely looking to improve internal communications and deepen their relationship with their fewer but more valuable customers," he concluded.