“When you hear the next big buzzword or hype, whether it’s SOA or SaaS or the new version of Windows, the adoption will be slower than what the press, analyst and vendor community leads you to believe,” she says.DiDio’s poll calculated usage of both private and public cloud technologies in the aggregate. About 8% of respondents have already implemented either a public or private cloud service, she says.

Companies with at least 3,000 end users are moving faster on the cloud than their smaller counterparts, the survey found. Twenty-one percent have already adopted or plan to adopt cloud computing in the next year, and another 36% are considering doing so.

Vendors have not yet offered a clear roadmap on how they plan to secure data in the cloud, DiDio says. Therefore private clouds may end up as the model of choice for many businesses.

“I actually think private clouds are going to be more popular than their public cloud counterparts, particularly for mid-sized businesses anywhere in that 500 to 3,000 employee range,” she says. “Folks are very risk-averse and that won’t change.”While private clouds don’t introduce the same security risks as public ones, adoption is going slow because IT managers are still getting up to speed on the technology, DiDio says. There is also considerable up-front expense in buying new hardware and other services and products needed to build a private cloud, she notes.

While security was the top concern cited by survey respondents, customers are also worried about availability risks in the public cloud model.