Is Use of Cloud Computing Lagging or Growing?

Forrester Research just completed a survey of 2,200 IT executives in the US, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK, and found that 49 percent of enterprise respondents and 51 percent representing SMBs “cited security and privacy concerns as their top reason for not using cloud computing.”

Apparently firms are showing little interest in pay-per-use hosting of virtual servers according to Forrester’s numbers; only 3 percent of enterprises are currently employing these services (same amount as 2008) and just 4 percent of SMB respondents, though that’s up from 2 percent from last year.

Noting that this has been a “challenging year for hardware and infrastructure technology vendors”, Tim Harmon, senior analyst for Forrester says: “Despite the hesitancy about cloud computing, virtualization remains a top priority for hardware technology decision-makers, driven by their objectives of improving IT infrastructure manageability, total cost of ownership, business continuity, and, to a lesser extent, their increased focus on energy efficiency.”

A totally contradictory picture is painted by another survey earlier in October from
IT consulting and solution provider firm Avanade. Their survey of more than 500 companies in 17 countries showed that the number of enterprises registering for some form of cloud computing service increased 320 percent between January and September 2009.

There's probably some definition loophole these surveys will use to defend their data or their statements. To gain some clarity on the issue, we look to the Web hosting providers and their valuable input. Rackspace Hosting, for example, doubled their Cloud hosting revenue to $15.3 million in 3Q '09 from $6.4 million in 2008. Even analysts following the company and the Cloud market such as Goldman Sachs have noted that Rackspace has continued to grow through the recession "as strength in Cloud and enterprise has offset the slowing growth from small-medium enterprises."

Despite the differences in survey data, Cloud computing use is obviously growing. The challenge that remains is figuring out in real numbers exactly how much.