Cloud Computing: Perfect for a Rainy Day

While it may seem ridiculous, a recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research asked 1,000 average Americans their thoughts on “The Cloud”. Shockingly, 51% of respondents believed that stormy weather has an adverse effect on cloud computing. Nearly one-third of the respondents think that cloud computing is a future technology.  In addition, 54% of the people surveyed said they have never used the cloud the cloud before, despite the fact that 97% are currently using the cloud in one way or another unbeknownst to them.

It’s a sobering fact that people in virtually any industry need to understand. Updating infrastructure and systems is one of many ways a company can improve their profits without needing to find a huge boost in revenues, and it’s a project that IT managers can really get behind.  But it is important to understand the realities. 

Most people don’t realize that online banking, file sharing, social networks, and even several popular e-mail clients exist in the cloud. Cloud computing isn’t the next wave of the future.  It is, quite simply, another technology option that today’s businesses have at their disposal.

Not all business owners and C-level employees are the most tech savvy individuals.  And while you’d hope that most decision makers within a company would have a strong enough grasp of new technology to understand that an afternoon drizzle isn’t going to crash their computer systems, the gap between what a dedicated cloud is and how the general public understands cloud computing is still very wide.

Thankfully, the researchers at Wakefield took their survey one step further and provided a basic education on cloud computing to individuals.  Following that education 68% of people said that they recognized the economic benefits of cloud computing. The most common benefits listed were lower costs, improved customer engagement and improved growth for small business.

The cloud can do several things to help a business grow, including:

• Reduce or eliminate initial costs for software packages and applications
• Provide regular data backup
• Enhanced security
• Increased Access
• Reduce onsite infrastructure costs

But before the cloud can do any of those things, the decision makers need to understand how the cloud can do all of those things. If the Wakefield survey is indeed indicative of the level of understanding that they typical American has of the cloud, there is a lot of education that still needs to be done.