A lot is being said about cloud computing. To separate reality from hype, market research consulting firm Management Insight Technologies, on behalf of CA Technologies, recently conducted a survey of North American and European IT professionals. The study found that large enterprises are exploring the benefits of cloud and are looking to expand from basic services like collaboration to more complex infrastructure and platform cloud services.

In essence, the survey finds that enterprises are active in the cloud and their virtualization efforts are contributing to broader cloud thinking. Consequently, cloud computing is "coming of age" in large enterprises and aligning IT decision makers and implementers around a Cloud computing platform.

More than 80 percent of large enterprises (1000+ employees) have at least one cloud service, and 53 percent of IT implementers indicate having more than six cloud services.

Although, IT professionals surveyed believe that cloud delivers greater efficiencies and saves money, security concern is a major barrier to cloud development. However, virtualized servers within organizations are contributing to cloud thinking. As

virtualization trend continues, the learning curve acquired during this virtual voyage will have a positive influence on the organizational policies toward the cloud, the study shows.

 Likewise, there is a clear difference is thinking between senior management and day-to-day managers. While senior management is the primary advocate for public clouds, private cloud proponents are those with more day-to-day responsibilities over virtualization and servers. The survey indicates that ultimately enterprises will have both public and private Clouds, and it will be the skills, processes and tools gained during the virtualization years that will help IT professionals manage a holistic and hybrid cloud platform.

In summary, the study finds that large enterprises are active in cloud. And IT professional have begun deploying web conferencing, email, and other collaboration tools in the cloud. As these professionals embrace cloud for efficiency, flexibility and scalability, they continue to wrestle with the realities of cost and security.

Although, cost and security concerns are posing to be hurdles, IT professional are advancing their skills and knowledge in this area to overcome these deterrents.

Concurrently, virtualization efforts are also driving many companies toward cloud computing. For IT professionals, translating virtualization into the cloud seems very logical. Organizations embarking on this voyage will face a learning curve of managing virtual sprawl, automating virtual environments and integrating public clouds. As a result they will also acquire on this voyage the technologies, tools, skills and processes to operationally integrate and manage these dynamic environments. It is these experiences that are contributing to cloud-style thinking, the report confirms.

For this study, Management Insight researchers surveyed 434 IT professionals across two regions – North American (273) and Europe (161).