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A recent study by INFORM suggests that only 12% of SMEs have adopted cloud solutions into their operations, despite it being probably the tech buzz-word of 2012. The same study claims that while 68 per cent of SMEs can envisage adopting the cloud at some point, 76 per cent haven't done so because of concerns over safety and 'a lack of familiarity'. INFORM's Karsten Horn commented "These results show that companies still view the cloud with caution, perceiving it to present great risk to the business, especially with regards to data safety. While there has been much discussion around the cloud, it's clear that this isn't resonating with businesses, as the low adoption rate comes from an uncertainty which I believe is being caused by conflicting information around the technology."

Howard Frear of EASY Software is keen to see his users moving toward the cloud and believes the reasons to do so far outweigh the perceived downsides: "Customers and prospects are under ever increasing pressure to deliver business applications that are easy to use, easy to deploy and easy to cost justify. Hosting these applications in the cloud would now appear to be a real and possibly obvious choice for many organisations, lured by the promise of many highly desirable features."

According to Frear, the upsides of cloud-based applications can include:

• Short delivery lead times through being available on-demand
• High levels of user acceptance because cloud solutions have to be intuitive to be consumed from a browser
• Cost-effectiveness - being priced by usage on a defined monthly or quarterly operating cost, rather than the more difficult to justify capital expenditure
• Highly scalable because the infrastructure is part of the deliverable - as Frear puts it "users, as usual, don't care as long as it works!"

DARK CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON?
At the same time even cloud 'evangelists' like Howard Frear recognize that the fears of some users can't be ignored, as he explains: "There are a number of real challenges that lurk just beneath the surface that can easily predate on all this potential efficiency. Firstly, security of information access and the wider compliance issues of 'where is my data held and who has access'. This is fostered by the ever present concerns around criminal activity and widely publicised data breaches, as well as the legal frameworks designed to keep personal and otherwise highly confidential within borders or other defined jurisdictions."

In addition, says Frear, even relatively small organisations have legacy data and existing applications that have developed over time to meet their requirements and there is an increasing trend towards systems integration: "Questions remain on how to migrate content and support an acceptable level of integration without compromising existing processes. A wholesale move is usually too impractical hence the growth in hybrid systems that are partially on-premise and partially in the cloud."

MD of Claranet UK Michel Robert agrees, citing the results of his company's annual cloud adoption survey: "In late 2011, more than half of respondents said that cloud computing services posed a greater security risk than in-house infrastructure, with only a third saying that it was an equivalent risk," said Robert. "Those figures are now 46 per cent and 44 per cent respectively, which shows a narrowing of the gap on trust. These figures are supported by the significant growth in the take-up of hybrid and public cloud infrastructure. This suggests that the industry is growing more successful in reassuring customers about their main worries over public cloud, which last year's research found to be reliability, data security and ease of migration."

Another potential concern voiced by EASY's Howard Frear relates to the fact that so many of the leading cloud application providers are new businesses that could be said to have been spawned from the evident growth of social media. Frear explains why this might be an issue: "There is the ever present risk of a 'dotcom 2' with some cloud solutions. The low cost of entry for users (free for some providers who are looking at the emulation of the Google advertising business model) could also mean that sustainability in the long-term is in jeopardy if take up is insufficiently fast to recoup their outlay in development and infrastructure."

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