IT Folks Fuzzy About the Cloud

In the midst of all the buzz about cloud computing, many IT professionals in mid-market organizations are uncertain what the cloud actually means.

At least those are the findings of a survey released last month by Virtacore Systems, a cloud computing provider. Polling IT and business folks at mid-market organizations (those with 100 to 1,000 employees), Virtacore discovered that almost half (48 percent) of the IT people felt they didn’t understand what cloud computing means. Even further, 64 percent of the non-IT business users expressed confusion over the concept of the cloud.

Pointing to specific examples such as Gmail, Google (News - Alert) Docs, Salesforce and WebEx, 54 percent of the people polled didn’t realize those were considered cloud-based applications even though they were using such tools in their own businesses.

And though cost savings is often touted as a major benefit of moving to the cloud, 47 percent of the respondents actually cited the expense of using cloud-based services as a major barrier. The lack of security, the ease and speed of deployment, compliance, visibility, and control were also mentioned as obstacles to taking to the cloud.

I don’t think the survey results are that surprising. Cloud computing is one of those terms that’s been overused so much the past few years. Where once we would have simply used terms like the Web, Internet or online to describe a particular feature or service, now everything seems to be in the cloud. Further, because cloud computing typically involves relinquishing a certain level of control and management to an outside company, there’s naturally going to be some confusion and a lack of transparency over what it actually entails.

Reviewing the survey results, Virtacore found that cloud providers who spend more time educating potential customers, especially those in mid-market companies, are the ones who get the business. Specifically, the poll found that those questioned said they more often picked a provider that best explained the solution over one that they’ve worked with before or was used by a competitor.