Rackspace – a leading cloud hosting provider, has recently commissioned a study in association with the centre for Creative and Social Technology (CAST) at Goldsmiths University of London to look into how cloud services have really changed the way we work and play in every aspect of our existence.
The study has revealed that 66% of British people are using cloud based services every day!
The research that has come from this study reveals that (without being fully aware of it) a significant 66% of British users are relying on cloud computing services every day! Check out the image below to see some cool facts and figures relating to how us British use cloud services.
Some of those facts are truly amazing. Almost 20% of people store more that 500gb on ‘cloud’ servers – that’s half a terabyte! My hard disk is a terabyte, and I have currently only used around 250gb of it, (one quarter) therefore that is double what I have on my hard disk, online!
The thing is, crazy figures like this are to be expected as internet speeds rise, disruption decreases and convenience increases. According to Ookla, today, the UK’s average download speed is 11mb/s (megabits – which are 8 times smaller than megabytes) and the USA has an average speed of 12 mb/s. Pretty fast. Upload speeds are a bit lower, with an average of 2mb/s in the UK and almost 3mb/s in the USA.
Other slightly less developed countries like India however have download speeds of just under 2mb/s and upload speeds of around 1mb/s. This is obviously not as good, however still pretty respectable in comparison to the dial-up speeds we used to get, where we couldn’t use the phone at the same time, and were restricted to 56kb/s!
These faster global speeds are making cloud services much more accessible and useful. Cloud technologies are the future, and the introduction of things like iCloud and the Chromebook just seem to reaffirm that.
What’s your view on the above image, is it shocking or to be expected?
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There is no doubt about it, of course cloud services are future. You can easily save your important data with privacy and great security. Time has gone when you used to carry moveable hard disk to save your data.
I’m certainly surprised with those figures. I had no idea that many people were using Cloud services, I thought it was a bit of a niche thing to be doing. Having said that 66% of people don’t even know they’re using cloud services..I’m not surprised about the demise of the CD DVD, I’ve not even touched one for ages!
I love the image, it’s good food for thought, I’d never really thought about things like YouTube and Facebook as being cloud services.
I think something a lot of people can’t get their head around this the amount of storage tablet pc’s and things like the iMac Airbook have, or in fact the lack of storage they have. If you store all you’re media (CD / DVDs) in the cloud, how much local storage do you need? Hardly any..Bring on the disk-less devices!
Thanks for the post.
Graham
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It is interesting stuff, I would agree with you Graham
There are a lot of pros that come along with using cloud services. Businesses do not have to invest in new equipment anymore. This could have a significant decrease in maintenance costs and expenses. At the same time, employees can access information from anywhere and anytime.
My company uses Dropbox and we would be lost without it. I love how versatile cloud computing
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It is a very useful modern day tool, I would agree with you there Shane
Cloud computing had been popular now.. even large company like microsoft and Apple are starting to embrace the power of cloud computing.
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I have to agree, there are some amazing stats. I find it incredible that 29% are using the cloud for 2 hours or more a day. I am also amazed that 11% think that they need to have passwords in their will.
Ofcourse it is the future and we can’t deny it. Not only large business but small business can also take advantage of the conveniences offered through cloud computing. A perfect way of increasing revenue at low cost.
Cloud computing is definitely going to get more and more prominent. Already, the benefits are clear to an increasing number of users. For me, Dropbox was the first sign of how useful cloud computing can be. No longer do I have to lug around driver CDs, DVDs, pen drives, etc. with me wherever I go. I can just hook up my laptop and Dropbox will sync my files. So far, I’ve not really used it for really large files due to the bandwidth usage and time concerns but as speeds go up, cloud storage could be the primary storage for a lot of users.
-Jean
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Future is definitely in cloud, at least until something even better emerges. Although a lot of work is needed to secure safety and show reliability which would secure even bigger growth.
That is true Victor, cloud computing is the latest thing, but it is also still a working progress
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I am realy surprised that people trust cloud computing and lots of information is stored on the internet, but for me I am not ready for it right now as in my area we don’t have reliable companies to store data.
So what I’ve gathered is that we already rely on cloud computing platforms, (I thought it had just started) more than we know. Guess I should keep my CDs and DVDs properly from now on
I did not really understand the cloud until recently, but i think people will embrace it once they finally figure out what it is. The could will allow us to never buy another computer again. I think we will buy cheap interfaces that allow us to access the content that is stored and processed elsewhere.
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Potentially Mike, but you do need a computer to access the info in the cloud!
The cloud is both the present and the future, no way around it. Others have mentioned the products they can’t live without, and I’m the same way about Google products. I don’t know what I would do without Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar, etc., etc. They make my life so much easier.
I would be interested in what percentage of British people are actually online, as that would tell us more about the adoption of cloud services. I find it hard to believe that many people can use the web and not utilize cloud services one way or another, even if it is simply using a hosted email account.
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