Research commissioned by Fujitsu and Microsoft and published by Connection Research has revealed that CIOs in Australia are “embracing the realities” of the cloud.

In the foreword to the report, entitled “Insights Quarterly: Cloud in Australia”, authors Craig Baty and Greg Stone describe cloud computing as “infectious” and add that “cloud has arrived, and will continue to grow in functionality and popularity”.

The key takeaways from the report, which polled 179 CIOs across Australia, were:

• Cost was the biggest driver in moving to the cloud – lower operational costs and lower capital expenditure was most important to approximately 21% of respondents
• Email and messaging was the service migrated to the cloud most frequently – 22.6% of respondents were on the way to utilising it
• Data security (48.5%) was the most important factor in choosing a cloud provider

Each question was ranked in degrees of importance, leading to a set of detailed results, which can be found here.

The report attempts to dispel any cloudy worries, stating that cloud computing “offers sufficient functionality, security and maturity to be a viable alternative to conventional processing”.

Intriguing? Other recent research backs this up.

A report from Qumu, the video platform providers, found that the most popular reason for moving to the cloud was better security integration. 30% of those asked found that, with cost efficiency (26.9%) and increased mobility (25.9%) trailing behind.

It would appear that, individual security disasters notwithstanding, security is on the rise. Other Microsoft research from May found that 35% of US-based SMEs had “experienced noticeably higher levels of security since moving to the cloud”.

Elsewhere, respondents were asked: “What does cloud computing mean to you?” with an interesting series of replies.

Nothing in the realm of the Citrix survey of American consumers which garnered such responses as ‘white fluffy things in the sky’, ‘mattress’ and ‘God’, although in fairness their open-ended question was simply “what’s the first word or phrase that comes to mind when they hear the term ‘the cloud’?”

Respondents in this survey of CIOs came up with a more appropriate word cloud: ‘applications’, ‘infrastructure’ and ‘software’ featuring strongly with ‘services’ the most popular.

Similarly, the report noted that “the surveyed CIOs do not share a standard definition of cloud computing, but CIOs know what it means…practically all agree it has many advantages”.

The link between cloud computing and hype was also examined, with the survey results revealing that most Australian CIOs thought cloud was overhyped, but was also important.

55% of respondents saw the cloud as overhyped and important, compared to 17.4% who thought it was overhyped for no reason, and 18.8% who thought it was underhyped.

Software as a Service (SaaS) polled 23.7% who saw it as overhyped for a reason; 14.3% overhyped for no reason; and 31.8% who believed it was underhyped.

But does this fit in with Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, published last month?

According to the latest hype cycle published last month, cloud has passed the peak of inflated expectations and is moving slowly towards the trough of disillusionment, with the plateau arriving within two to five years.

“The survey results show that many organisations are embracing cloud computing wholeheartedly, and even those that are not are exploring its possibilities,” the report emphasises.

Do you agree with the results of the research? Is cloud overhyped but still important?