CDW LLC, Vernon Hills, Ill., a provider of technology products and services to business, government, education and healthcare, announced the results of its first Cloud Computing Tracking Poll, an assessment of current and future cloud computing use in business, government, healthcare and education based on a survey of 1,200 IT professionals familiar with their organization’s use of, or plans for, cloud computing. Twenty-eight percent of U.S. organizations are using cloud computing today, CDW found, with most reporting (73 percent) that their first step into the cloud was implementation of a single cloud application.

While many organizations (84 percent) said they have already employed at least one cloud application, most do not yet identify themselves as cloud users who are implementing or maintaining cloud computing. CDW defines cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned.

Applications most commonly operated in the cloud are commodity applications such as email (50 percent of cloud users), file storage (39 percent), web and video conferencing (36 and 32 percent, respectively), and online learning (34 percent).

Among current cloud users, 84 percent said they cut application costs by moving to the cloud. On average, cloud users report saving 21 percent annually on those applications moved to the cloud.

For a copy of the complete CDW 2011 Cloud Tracking Poll, visit http://www.cdw.com/cloudtrackingpoll.