Reader Research Our thanks to all of you who took part in our recent El Reg Cloud survey. Our research partner Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics has written up a study based on the results - it's free to download and no registration is required. Here are some choice cuts:

Key findings range from the blindingly obvious:

To the enlightening:

‘With familiar incumbents extending their offerings into the cloud arena, cloud services are now being worked into the plans and activities of conservative as well as progressive organisations.’

But, as you no doubt know only too well, not everybody is convinced and there still remains a healthy (?) amount of scepticism around cloud even in this sample of 318 readers who, it seems, are relatively experienced with Cloud.

Those that do or have made the leap tend to go with easy wins - arguably the ones that people have been using for years anyway - like the provisioning of Utility SaaS services. By our definition, Utility SaaS services are the general purpose horizontal applications such as email, content management, and collaboration.

These figure more prominently in plans and activities than more complex SaaS application services such as ERP, full scope CRM and line of business solutions. Furthermore, while ‘Complex SaaS’ and traditional application services appeal more to larger enterprises, the value of ‘Utility SaaS’ is recognised by all sizes of organisations.

You can find out more on how organisations are deploying Cloud services by reading the full report. It’s available here. ®