Welcome Guest. | Log In | Register | Membership Benefits

Consumers Don’t Know What 'Cloud Computing' Is, Even Though They Use it All The Time

Just 22 percent of U.S. consumers were familiar with the term, according to NPD Group

Aug 09, 2011 | 08:12 AM | 


PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, August 9, 2011 – According to a recent study from The NPD Group, a leading market research company, just 22 percent of U.S. consumers were familiar with the term “cloud computing,” which denotes software applications or processes that are accessed from the Internet, rather than on personal computer hard drives. While the term “cloud computing” is still confusing to many consumers, the activities that constitute cloud computing are being performed by the vast majority of consumers.

More than three quarters (76 percent) of U.S. respondents in NPD’s “Digital Software and the Cloud Report” reported using some type of Internet-based cloud service in the past 12 months -- with email, tax preparation and online gaming leading the way. Even so, the enormous usage of these cloud-based services has not completely supplanted desktop-computer-based applications: Nearly one quarter (24 percent) of U.S. consumers reported purchasing a computer-based software application in the past six months.

“Whether they understand the terminology or not, consumers are actually pretty savvy in their use of cloud-based applications,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD. “They might not always recognize they are performing activities in the cloud, yet they still rely on and use those services extensively. Even so, they are not yet ready to completely give up on traditional PC-based software applications.”

Activities* Performed Over the Internet? | Savvy vs. Non-Savvy Consumers

Activity (“Savvy” vs. “Non-Savvy”) Email (84% vs. 68%) Gaming (47% vs. 38%) Tax (44% vs. 39%) Photo sharing (49% vs. 33%) Video sharing (44% vs. 31%) Office productivity (33% vs. 24%) Disc back-up/storage (31% vs. 20%)

[Source: The NPD Group’s “Digital Software and the Cloud Report” 2011]

Consumers who are familiar with cloud computing tend to use it more than those who are unfamiliar with the term; however, depending on the type of activity, there are some relative differences between savvy and non-savvy users. For example cloud-savvy consumers are far more likely to use cloud-based email (84 percent of savvy consumers versus 68 percent for non-savvy consumers), while there is more parity between savvy and non-savvy consumers when it comes to tax preparation (44 percent versus 39 percent).

“Tax preparation is one area that bridges the PC-cloud divide,” Baker said. “The consumer’s knowledge and sophistication matter little in terms of how much they use tax prep services; additionally, it is the only type of cloud-based application consumers have shown a willingness to pay for. This might indicate a path to help consumers understand the value of computing in the cloud, and allow retailers and service providers to monetize additional services.”

NPD’s “Digital Software and the Cloud Report” (http://npd.com/lps/EvolvingTechnology/) covers both consumer familiarity with and use of cloud computing, as well as software digital downloading trends. The information in the report was derived from an online survey fielded in May 2011 to a representative sample of 1,822 U.S. adults (age 18 and older).

About The NPD Group, Inc. The NPD Group is the leading provider of reliable and comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries. Today, more than 1,800 manufacturers, retailers, and service companies rely on NPD to help them drive critical business decisions at the global, national, and local market levels. NPD helps our clients to identify new business opportunities and guide product development, marketing, sales, merchandising, and other functions. Information is available for the following industry sectors: automotive, beauty, commercial technology, consumer technology, entertainment, fashion, food and beverage, foodservice, home, office supplies, software, sports, toys, and wireless. For more information, contact us or visit http://www.npd.com/ and http://www.npdgroupblog.com. Follow us on Twitter: @npdtech and @npdgroup.



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dark Reading encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dark Reading moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Dark Reading further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS



Cloud Security Reports

report Monitoring And Measuring Cloud Providers' Security Performance
There is no ignoring the cloud, which means that IT professionals must find ways to monitor and measure the performance of cloud providers. While moving even in part to a cloud model is a big change for many reasons, the most significant difference is a loss of direct control. Just as security groups often struggle with managing security inside a corporation when in a governance role, we struggle even more with governing the security of assets that no longer sit within our own data centers. The challenge is to develop and implement a strong governance model for these cloud offerings that ensures that security is part of the conversation.

report How to Manage Identity in the Public Cloud
Use of the public cloud for enterprise applications complicates what was already a complicated task: identity management. As companies increase their use of cloud-based applications, IT and security professionals must make some tough and far-reaching decisions about how to provision, deprovision and otherwise manage user access. This Dark Reading report examines the options and provides recommendations for determining which one is right for your organization.

report Spot Trouble In The Cloud: Adapting Security Monitoring & Incident Response.
Security monitoring, incident response and forensics are essential, even in the cloud. But the cloud by definition implies relinquishing at least some control, which can make these practices problematic. In this report, we identify the challenges of detecting and responding to security issues in the cloud and discuss the most effective ways to address them.

Other reports from the Cloud Security Tech Center:




Featured Webcasts
Featured Whitepapers
Featured Reports