Cloud computing by the numbers

You think you’ve heard enough about the cloud? I get pummeled daily by phone calls and email pitching every possible cloud angle. If there were a cloud toaster, the UPS guy would bring me one.

But even I was surprised to see three new cloud studies released in the space of a couple of weeks — from Harvard Business Review (HBR), The Open Group, and Quest Software.

[ Read other recent Eric Knorr posts on cloud computing: “Why the cloud can’t be separated from open source” and “How to cash in on cloud computing.”| Check out InfoWorld’s iGuide on cloud computing. ]

In the midst of cloud overkill, I suddenly had an opportunity to mash together a big survey base of about 2,500 respondents and identify some significant trends. First, let’s look at each survey’s signature result:

• In the HBR cloud survey, which targeted “business and technology leaders,” the surprise was that flexibility, scalability, and the ability to experiment were the big attractors — not cost reduction, as you might expect.
• The Open Group survey, which targeted “IT professionals,” highlighted a disconnect: 82 percent of those surveyed said that they expect the cloud to impact “one or more business processes,” but only 28 percent were prepared for the changes that might ensue.
• The Quest survey, which targeted “IT professionals in government and education,” found that half of respondents were already on the cloud adoption path — but roughly that same proportion said they had no “exit strategy” if their cloud initiative were to fail.

All this serves to remind us that when it comes to the cloud, we’re still in very early days. I think that’s one reason the surveys themselves are a little sketchy. Are answers to broad questions about “cloud adoption” useful, when that can mean anything from a Salesforce.com account to a private dev and test cloud?

I would argue that they are — but only in measuring attitudes, not implementations of anything. In one stark assessment of the muddled nomenclature, nearly two-thirds of respondents to a question in the Quest survey saw “a lot” or a “moderate level of” confusion about the difference between cloud computing and virtualization.

Nonetheless, the numbers are still pretty interesting, in part because they were culled from three very different groups:

• Adoption and attitude. Both the Open Group and Quest surveys put current cloud adoption levels at slightly below half. The HBR survey served up a much higher number of 75 percent — but 31 of those points were attributed to “limited” cloud adoption, which could mean anything from a Google Docs account to a stray managed security service. In the Open Group and Quest surveys, only a quarter didn’t plan to adopt cloud computing at all; that resistance stood at just 2 percent in the HBR survey. In other words: They’ve bought it! The cloud era is upon us!
• Public, private, or hybrid? Not surprisingly, few respondents were sold on an all-public-cloud solution. When asked about which cloud model met their future needs, a mere 7.3 percent in the Quest survey said the public cloud; that number rose to 17 percent in the Open Group survey. (HBR asked only about current adoption, of which 29 percent was public cloud, no doubt due to all those existing Salesforce.com accounts.) A plurality in both the Quest and Open Group surveys liked the hybrid cloud model best.
• Key cloud concerns. No surprise that security was the No. 1 worry across all surveys. Compliance and control came next, both of which loomed especially large in the Quest government and education survey. I was happy to see interoperability among the top concerns in both the HBR and Open Group surveys, since I think it’s both the biggest problem and the most exciting opportunity as cloud adoption takes off.

The HBR survey, which at 1,500 respondents had the largest base, is one of the only cloud surveys I’ve seen with a business slant. The message that comes across is that the business side is very much enamored of the potential. Over 60 percent of those surveyed believe cloud computing “Lets us experiment more easily and at low cost,” “Enables deeper collaboration with business partners,” and “Frees up IT resources to work on more strategic things.”

Are such high expectations well founded? After all, the cloud may let you spin up virtual machines or subscribe to services on the fly, but it’s not going to write the specialized applications you need to handle unique business processes. On the other hand, the cloud accelerates dev, test, and deployment, and eventually you may be able to string together prebuilt cloud services into applications that meet requirements in record time. But that latter scenario is a long way off and probably not on the radar of most cloud enthusiasts.

Since the beginning of computing, business has wanted to just press a button and get what it wants. Cloud computing is the latest technology trend to promise that, and it probably has a better shot than most — particularly in conjunction with the huge explosion of mobile devices, every one of which can serve as a cloud access point.

But as these surveys underline, comprehension is still at a primitive stage. One of the last questions in the HBR survey asks which factors might accelerate a move to the cloud. The leading answer by a factor of nearly two to one is this: “an improved understanding internally about the real benefits and risks.” Amen to that.

This article, “Cloud computing by the numbers,” originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Eric Knorr’s Modernizing IT blog, and for the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld on Twitter.