Trustworthy Cloud Computing

CHAPTER 4MAKING CLOUD COMPUTING TRUSTWORTHY

4.1 PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS BETWEEN THE CUSTOMERS AND THE CLOUD, AND THE WAYS TO OVERCOME THEM

One of the first problems that arise when applying some new innovative technology is a serious psychological barrier between the technology and the users. Users are somewhat conservative, and sometimes are just scared of new technologies as of something too novel, have a lot of concerns related to complicated architecture, to uncomfortable and unclear user interface, to security, reliability, privacy, and so on. The farther the users are from IT and programming, the higher those barriers are.

In the 1980s and even in the 1990s, a similar situation took place in relation to the use of computers in general in the everyday activity of experts in some fields other than IT. For example, my own experience in the early 1990s of communicating to medical staff in our country, in relation to the use of computers and expert systems for their activity, has shown some aspects of psychological barrier: medical experts were afraid to pass their data knowledge to computer, scared that computers can replace them and their work would become redundant, did not understand the specifics of computer–user interface, and so on. Fortunately, as a result of many years of hard work by IT specialists on improving user interface and training users, that barrier has been overcome, and now doctors or specialists in chemistry or even in philosophy sometimes know and can ...