The cloud often seems a magical place, full of promise for businesses looking to scale their growth and work on a more efficient level.  The reality is that many businesses struggle with cloud adoption, as a concept as well as its implementation.  A good portion of the innovation we’re seeing in the cloud industry is a result of ongoing concerns that still need to be addressed, but what do businesses actually think of the cloud?

A recent survey done by VMware brings out some interesting facts about firms and organizations in UK.  It reports that most small businesses in Britain are much slower in adopting internet-based software, storage and communication services as compared to other European companies. The survey was conducted by VMware on 1,600 companies by VMware finding that on average 60pc of SMEs had adopted some internet-based IT compared to only 48pc in the UK.

An additional report by Centre for European business research also report that the adoption of cloud services across the EU could generate up to €763 billion, with a €233 billion surge in businesses’ profits. But the irony is that most of the firms in UK are showing slow growth to adopt technologies. As of now, most of the SMBs are using simple office software applications like Microsoft Office and other email software. Moreover, they are storing data remotely rather than on the office server or PC hard drives.

“The earliest adopters are technically oriented start-ups with no installed base of systems, people who are comfortable with putting their applications and data in the crowd. After that, it tends to be almost the opposite — services firms who don’t want the hassle of managing the technology and are happy for a cloud firm to do it for them,” said Chris Jagusz, retail managing director at IT specialist Daisy Group.

The study suggests that an average of 60 per cent of smaller companies in Europe use cloud computing where possible, while just 48 per cent of British firms have embraced the new technology. While £9.8bn was spent globally by companies on cloud-related technology in 2009, spending by SMEs represents almost half the total.

“The cloud is nothing new, it has been in the industry in multifaceted forms for a number of years, starting with service bureaus, asp’s, msp’s etc. The only difference now is that the concept of cloud computing has matured and come into the enterprise mainstream and some “cloud type” offerings exist which enterprises can design into their future service needs. The hype on cloud is going thru the roof purely because people assume that cloud will mean — infinite capacity at near zero costs and 100% flexibility as what cloud will offer. These survey findings prove that current cloud services are far away from this truth.”

Although it clearly shows that UK firms are slow in technology adoption, particularly cloud adoption, we heard a positive news last month when IBM announced its rapidly expanding cloud services reaching Europe, by way of United Kingdom. Cable&Wireless and IBM announced their partnership that will create an intelligent data and communication solutions that will effectively monitor the power consumption of more or less 50 million smart electrical meters in the country—they named it UK Smart Energy Cloud.