Survey casts doubt on cloud adoption

26.06.2009
New survey results cast doubt on whether computing adoption will ramp up in the next 12 months, with only 15% of corporate customers having adopted or considering adopting cloud technology over the next year.

A survey of 300 corporations worldwide found that 38% are undecided or unsure about whether they will adopt cloud services, and another 47% said they are not considering implementing cloud in the next year. Security is the biggest roadblock.

“An overwhelming 85% majority of corporate customers a private or public cloud computing infrastructure in 2009 because of fears that cloud providers may not be able to adequately secure sensitive corporate data,” writes Information Technology Intelligence Corp. principal analyst Laura DiDio in a new report.

The ITIC survey participants ranged from businesses with 100 users to large enterprises with more than 100,000 end users, in many types of industries. Companies in 19 countries were surveyed but 85% were based in North America.

The findings may be surprising given the industry’s current obsession with cloud computing, but the numbers aren’t too far off the findings of other surveys. recently found that 25% of enterprises with at least 1,000 employees are using or plan to use hosted virtual server offerings such as Amazon EC2, and that fewer than 20% of smaller companies plan to do so.Earlier this year, said that cloud application infrastructure technologies are not yet mature and that adoption right now is limited mostly to “pioneers and trailblazers.”

DiDio says current cloud adoption is lagging behind the hype, but that is to be expected.