One of the easiest ways for a vendor to show a technology is catching on is to do a survey. Recently two companies offering cloud solutions released polls from their communities showing where the cloud is popular.

Spiceworks, which makes a free vendor sponsored Web-based network management and help desk solutions, said 70 per cent of the 600 of global IT professionals that responded to its survey are using cloud-based Web hosting applications. Another three per cent are planning to use a Web hosting service in the next six months.

Sixty per cent of respondents said they are using cloud-based security applications, while 30 per cent are using backup apps. While online backup solutions showed the lowest adoption rates, the company said in a release, 13 per cent of respondents said they plan to implement an offering in the next six months.

Of those who have or plan to deploy a cloud-based backup solution, nearly 75 per cent have already or will back up more than 100 gigabytes of data to the cloud. One-third of respondents have or plan to back up more than 1 terabyte of data to the cloud.

On the other hand, just under 60 per cent of respondents who aren’t using a cloud-based backup solution said “heavy bandwidth requirements” were a concern, followed by 48 per cent who said “risk of data loss/security breach” was barrier to adoption.

Of those using cloud-based security solutions, anti-spam solutions are used by 41 per cent of respondents, followed by content filtering at 27 per cent and anti-virus at 22 per cent.

The roughly 40 per cent who don’t use cloud-based security said the “lack of control over solution components,” “risk of relying on third parties to deliver critical services,” and “bandwidth requirements” were the primary barriers to adoption.

The survey was sent to people registered with the Spiceworks Community, which the company says numbers 2.6 million. Sixty eight per cent of respondents were from North America and 32 per cent from Europe, the middle east and Asia. The majority of those surveyed work in organizations with less than 1,000 employees.