Just Another Word for the Internet?

When terminology from the IT department breaks through into the mainstream culture, you know you're onto something actually hot. This is the case with the term and the concept behind "cloud computing," which has spread like a west Texas prairie fire. Nevertheless, for all the hype surrounding cloud computing, surveys show that only a fraction of organizations have adopted or are actively pondering a cloud offering. And the most popular cloud application? Email. To all appearances, "the" cloud is the same as "the" Internet.

Recent survey

According to a recent survey by CDW, only 28 percent of organizations are actively implementing or maintaining a cloud computing service. The survey, which involved more than 1,200 IT professionals and had a margin of error of 2.7 percent, found that email was the most common cloud application, as it was used by 50 percent of the cloud people in CDW's survey, followed by file storage, video conferencing, and online learning with 34 percent.

The lack of enterprise-type applications on CDW's list begs the question: Where are the enterprise cloud apps? Has the real cloud revolution--the one involving real applications that run the day-to-day businesses of regular companies, not the iCloud--but to begin? Or like as not cloud computing is just a marketing term that's failed to coalesce into a real deliverable for 20th century-type companies that make or move or sell things to consumers and other businesses?

Success story of the software-as-a-service

While Benioff is undeniably a success story of the software-as-a-service and hosted computing model, maybe his view of things is just a bit clouded. Because according to North Bridge Venture Partners' Future of Cloud Computing Survey released last week, cloud computing nevertheless hasn't graduated pre-school.

NBVP's survey, which included 413 IT decision makers at regular companies and IT vendors alike, found that only two out of five organizations are "experimenting with a move to the cloud." The results, show that, even among more progressive IT organizations, the number of people getting their hands dirty with cloud computing is disproportionably small compared to the rampant hype in the market.

The problem with cloud computing

The problem with cloud computing, according to Derrick Harris, a senior analyst with the IT technology group GigaOM, which helped with the NBVP survey, is that companies are unclear on which technologies they need, how they work at the same time, who the main vendors are, and how to implement cloud technologies effectively.

Even among today's cloud users, spending on cloud is just one-third of the total IT budget, according to CDW's survey. This led David Cottingham, senior director, managed services at CDW, to comment: "....[B]efore wide-scale implementation, IT managers are taking a hard look at their IT governance, architecture, security, and other prerequisites for cloud computing, in order to ensure that their implementations are successful."

The biggest barrier to cloud adoption

Security is the biggest barrier to cloud adoption, which isn't surprising considering the recent spate of hacks at large companies in recent weeks. If RSA, Lockheed Martin, the International Monetary Fund, Sony, Netflix, Google, and the Oak Ridge Laboratory can't keep hackers out of their systems, how is a cloud computing provider with considerably fewer resources going to keep its customers' records safe? Sure they might guarantee tight security in writing and present a sophisticated SLA, however are those pledges credible?

It's clear we are in early days of cloud computing, and there is for all that much to work out previously--or if, in effect--regular companies will put their most valuable applications and data in the cloud, which at the end of the day is just the Internet.

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