Computing Cloud - Do Consumers Lead the Way?

On September 12 the Pew Research Center published a study on Cloud Computing and it's adoption within America. You can see the study here.

After reading the study my first thought was - great information too bad it doesn't help me understand adoption rates within Large Enterprises, Mid Size Enterprises and Small businesses. The markets that I typically care about on a day-to-day basis.

This view was reinforced by the types of Cloud Computing applications they polled on: Online Email, Videos, Photos and data backups. All consumer - not business - oriented activities.

After lamenting for a bit about ever finding true market data for Cloud Computing I'm beginning to wonder if I'm thinking about the market in the right way. Is there a difference between the Enterprise and the Consumer? How many of the people within this study were using online Email applications either from work or for work related activities? The Pew report says that 56% of Internet Users have a Yahoo, Google, Hotmail or other account. 5% pay to store documents online - and another 5% use the Internet to backup their hard-drives.

Now I realize that there is a big difference between a large Multi-Global enterprise adopting Salesforce.com or leveraging computing cycles from Amazon's EC2 and a consumer accessing their online Email account. But what I question is - how much Cloud Computing adoption has occurred from within large Enterprises - without the Enterprise explicitly acknowledging or paying for the service? Are large Enterprises already leveraging and gaining benefits from the Cloud simply because their people are adopting the technologies in order to simplify their day-to-day activities.

Now looking at the Pew study it seems to indicate something very different. It shows that Americans are adopting the Cloud in large numbers. Enterprises are already seeing increased productivity due to this adoption. While most companies have not even heard of the Cloud or put in place any formal procedures or projects to adopt Cloud computing, their employees are already using it.

This reminds me a bit of when Web browsers first started to gain traction. Enterprises did not immediately see the benefit of using a browser to access core Enterprise applications. Instead their users were off looking up information and browsing the web - in order to help them make their job's easier. The employees were the early adopters and the Enterprises only later realized they could take advantage of the same technologies to improve their bottom line.

I don't think the Pew study is a big shock. None of their findings seemed to be way off what I would have assumed based on anecdotal evidence. However it does crystallize for me that the Cloud Computing wave might be more than just hype - and the start of another transformation of the Enterprise.