Blog

In October we posted an Article “Confused By Cloud Computing. You are not alone!  infographic and report” The Results drawn from a survey carried out by Wakefield Research for Citrix, in which over 1000 participants in America took part in a questionnaire that asked them what the Cloud means to them. The answers, well, a bit foggy.

But it’s not just a American Problem! We started talking about “the cloud” back in 2008 and although we’re all using it every day for business or pleasure, there seems to be some confusion on what exactly the term cloud means… to people in the UK.

WebFusion recently release the results of a survey in which they asked more than 1,000 of the general public in the UK on the meaning of “cloud computing”.

They discovered that 50 per cent of them don’t have a clue what the cloud is, almost two in five people (38 per cent) had little or no understanding of the term, while only a third (34 per cent) were confident that they knew what it meant.

Cloud services are now prevalent and even the average internet user is likely to have some experience of things like Dropbox and iTunes. But despite an increasing demand for such products, it seems the IT sector hasn’t done a great job when it comes to educating the public about the underlying principles of the cloud. Of course, not everyone is going to develop a deep understanding of what the cloud is, but when 50 per cent of people admit they haven’t got a clue about it then you have to start wondering just how useful a term it is.

Consumer-targeted products like iTunes and Dropbox don’t rely on a knowledge of the cloud – users just want them to work, but the fact that only a third of people recognised them as cloud services suggests ignorance over the issue runs deeper than the public is willing to admit.

When you consider that among those left baffled by one of IT’s favourite buzzwords will be a significant number of existing and future small business owners, exactly the kind of people who should be getting excited by the possibilities of more technical cloud products, the full depths of the problem start to emerge.

So should we stop talking about the cloud, or is it simply a case of having to do more to educate people about exactly what is meant by cloud computing?

Infographic by the Webfusion Cloud Virtual Server team.

Want to go cloud? Are you interested in finding out more about the benifits your Company could realize. Contact the Calm Response Team