I've heard many of things about the cloud since I've been writing on the subject but one that I've not heard before is the ability to work stark naked.
Yet that's one of the key benefits identified US respondents in a new survey from Citrix looking at attitudes to the cloud. Yes, one can forget cost savings, flexibility, scalability, the real bonus is the ability to work as nature intended - it's somehow not something I'd see in many organisation's business plans.
But such an opinion as at a piece with the survey, which has revealed widescale ignorance of cloud with the majority of respondents thinking the cloud was a fluffy white thing in the sky (yes, really) or was something to do with the weather. Indeed, the majority of respondents thought that cloud performance was affected by the weather. There were some people who knew what cloud was ... but only 16 percent.
The whole survey is a sorry tale of ignorance and bluster with 54 percent of respondents admitting that they speak about cloud without knowing what it is. After the working naked admission, the most staggering statistic is that 17 percent of respondents admitted to talking about cloud on a first date. I don't know what resondents were chatting about but cloud would be a long way down the list when it comes to date topics - or perhaps things have really changed since I was in the dating game and these days, chats about virtualisation and cloud APIs are the conversation pieces for aspiring lovers.
I wouldn't have been shocked to read about such a survey last year - cloud computing was still in its infancy - but it's matured since then and cloud is very much part of most company's plans. Indeed, a recent Gartner survey had it in the infamours trough of disillusionment as many organisations struggled with cloud not meeting their demands/expectations.
It goes show that cloud vendors still have a long way to go to meet customer expectations. Yes, there's growing interest in cloud; yes, it's part of many business plans and yes, there's greater knowledge than ever before but the Citrix survey has revealed high levels of interest that are going to need addressing at some point.
One othe thing, lest we should get too sniffy about American ignorance, I wonder what we'd find if we did a survey on the streets of the UK - I suspect something similar, although we might get a percentage thinking the Cloud was an act from the X Factor.
But, of course, the people in the know wouldn't be taking part in any such surveys. They'd be at home working. With their clothes off.
