The Midmarket’s Cloud Appetite Is Unsated

Sometimes, a publication or a Website just has to say something to get attention. I understand that. In this case, there can’t really be any other explanation for Forbes posting a blog claiming that interest in cloud computing has "peaked."

Author Reuven Cohen bills himself as the "Digital Provocateur" (or "Provocator," depending which page you look at). Maybe "Digital Ironist" would be more appropriate, because there’s something deeply ironic about relying on sentiment analysis to draw conclusions about dwindling interest in cloud computing…



If any meme is on its last legs, it’s sentiment analysis — something author Tom Davenport told us last week gives such a "crude approximation" of what people are thinking that you’d be better off doing it with a "group of interns rather than an automated tool!"

Here, in any case, is Cohen’s methodology. Using Google Insights, Cohen:

…compared both the terms ‘cloud computing’ and ‘the cloud.’ What I discovered is that interest in both terms is down significantly from its previous highs set back in June 2011. According to Google, the level of web search interest is sitting roughly at July 2010 levels and dropping fast.

Now, is this really sentiment analysis? After all, Cohen wasn’t attempting to discover whether people hate the cloud or :wub: it. I’d say it is — or at least that it runs into precisely the same problems he was trying to gauge "interest" — his term — in the search terms "the cloud" and "cloud computing."

Well, guess what? A reduced interest in clouds might simply reflect global warming.

In fact, the results of Cohen’s search shows "interest" in "the cloud" rated at 32 (on Google’s 100-point scale) in December 2010, and at 28 in May 2012 (Cohen is presumably not using the term "down significantly" in any technical statistical sense — nor, if he thinks searches for "the cloud" peaked in July 2011, can he read a graph).

Searches for "cloud computing" do seem to have declined in volume, but there’s an obvious reason for that. Does anyone genuinely interested in cloud services use the term "cloud computing" anymore? The more enterprise becomes familiar with the phenomenon, the more likely people are to search for "SaaS," or indeed just "cloud." "Cloud computing" is a beginner’s search term. It’s as if someone searched for information about the Internet using "Worldwide Web."

In fact, whether people are "interested" in the cloud or not, it’s just implausible to suggest that they are become any less reliant on it. The workspace, especially at the mid-level, is clearly beyond the desktop to employ Web- and cloud-based tools and apps, especially apps for mobile.

In fact, the convergence of mobile and social trends makes an enterprise space with no reliance on the cloud almost unthinkable. It’s another matter, of course, to migrate key infrastructure to cloud platforms, and it’s reasonable to argue that this is happening more slowly than some had predicted.

But there’s no way midmarket interest in the cloud has "peaked." One possible explanation of Cohen’s results — if we’re to take them seriously at all — is that the private cloud has become more significant to IT professionals in the mid-tier than the public cloud, and that this generates "less commercial buzz and public appeal."

Certainly, midmarket CIOs aren’t going to be distracted from considering the possible benefits of cloud service integration by journalistic bids for attention like this.