SWC Technology Partners surveyed 210 mid-market IT and business leaders and found that cloud computing, at least for the mid-market and even more so in the enterprise, is still very early in its evolution. The survey also revealed a few surprises about the acceptance of telecommuting in the mid-market.

The disconnect between the hype of cloud computing and the actual implementation of cloud computing reared its head in the SWC survey. Only 3.7 percent of respondents said that their company has adopted a cloud computing solution for the entire company. And, over half (54.2 percent) of the respondents indicate that their company is not pursuing a single cloud computing initiative. Privacy and security (20.9 percent) were listed as the biggest concern when considering the cloud, followed by cost (9.8 percent).

"The technology industry can be rife with hype," said Elliott Baretz, Vice President of SWC. "Most reasons for eschewing the cloud have nothing to do with technology. Privacy and compliance and legal issues are what are keeping businesses on the sidelines."

Of the cloud services that are in production, Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint hold a comfortable lead, an indication that e-mail, productivity tools and document management are the top candidates to go to the cloud. Almost 65 percent of respondents using a cloud service are using Microsoft Exchange Online and 48 percent are using Microsoft SharePoint Online. Google is also in the running, with 24 percent opting for Google Cloud Services (i.e. Google Apps). Surprisingly, Amazon's EC2 cloud service only captured 7.4 percent.

Baretz says that most cloud adoption is happening at the SMB and start-up level where the cost to benefit ratio favors the cloud. "These are the companies that need to save money on infrastructure costs the most," he says.