Yep you heard that right - 51% of people (including the oh so tech-savy millenial generation) believe that stormy weather can interfere with cloud computing.

The results come from a recent survey of more than 1,000 Americans conducted this August by Wakefield Research on behalf of Citrix.

Maybe if Hurricane Issac were to wash out... I don't know, say a data centre (like what happened to Amazon this past June) then sure maybe stormy weather really could interfere with cloud computing (and did) - but I don't think that's the type of interference that those 51% were talking about.

The national survey shows pretty clearly that more people are still utterly confused when it comes to understanding the 'cloud' (and I'll admit - before I started writing for IT in Canada I probably fit into that category as well! )

One of the most telling (and interesting) facts to come out of the survey is the fact that a third of respondents see cloud as a future-technology. Yet over 97% of those (pretty much EVERYONE) is already using cloud services today via online shopping, banking, social networking and file sharing.

“This survey clearly shows that the cloud phenomenon is taking root in our mainstream culture, yet there is still a wide gap between the perceptions and realities of cloud computing,” Kim DeCarlis, Citrix's VP of corporate marketing, said in a release.

“While significant market changes like this take time, the transition from the PC era to the cloud era is happening at a remarkable pace. The most important takeaway from this survey is that the cloud is viewed favorably by the majority of Americans, and when people learn more about the cloud they understand it can vastly improve the balance between their work and personal lives.”

You can check out the full results of the survey in the link at the top, they're pretty amusing. For example, when asked what "the cloud" is, 29% of people said it's an actual (fluffy, white) cloud, and only 16% actually said that it was related to computer networking and storage.

"Some of the other verbatim responses include: toilet paper, pillow, smoke, outerspace, cyberspace, mysterious network, unreliable, security, sadness, relaxed, overused, oh goody a hacker’s dream, storage, movies, money, memory, back-up, joy, innovation, drugs, heaven and a place to meet," the Citrix release stated.

So do you think people are going to catch on to the cloud anytime soon? Or are we still a long ways away before the mainstream population understands and embraces cloud... even though they are all using it already?

I find the results of the survey both funny and sad. Funny, because a bunch of rain clouds cannot actually impede cloud computing, and sad because people can be so ignorant.

I skimmed the survey, and found some more interesting results: nearly a quarter of respondents admitted that they pretend to know what the cloud is when it's brought up in conversation, although half of respondents suspect that when other people discuss it, they don't know what they're talking about either. In spite of the fact that a great many people do not know what the cloud is, they seem to think it will bring economic benefits. How do they know it will help the economy if they don't know what it is? I wonder, were these answers "fed" to them (meaning that respondents were given a choice of answers to the question and picked whichever one they thought sounded best)? Also, for the respondents that claim they're not using the cloud- are they completely aware of what technologies they're using? If you use Google Docs, you're using the cloud. And that's free for consumers.

Personally, I would say people (across the world, not just in the States) are a long way away from completely understanding the cloud. Two decades after the introduction of the internet, people still don't understand it (myself included ).

I would be curious to see a survey of what Canadians think of the cloud.