As you go, so goes your company. At least in terms of which cloud apps you use that find their way into the workplace.

Showing that work imitates life, a CDW report surveyed 1,242 IT professionals and found that a major driver of corporate cloud adoption is users' experiences of consumer services.

Nearly three quarters of respondents (73%) claimed that, in their company, employees' use of personal cloud apps has "significantly influenced" the decision to move wholesale to the cloud. Similarly, just over three in five (61%) cloud-using organizations agreed that employee personal devices have culminated in a faster move to the cloud, according to an article on CloudComputingNews.net.

It's also the case with IT professionals - two-thirds agreed that their personal use of cloud has influenced the company in terms of adoption.

Another aspect of the CDW research was a detailed look at the infrastructure being moved over to cloud on a company-by-company basis. Storage software was the most frequently cited service moved to the cloud by SMBs (40% small businesses, 35% medium businesses), while conferencing and collaboration tools were the most popular for large organizations (40%).

New Guidelines Eliminate PCI as a Barrier to Cloud Adoption
It pays to discover the in's and out's of security in the cloud and how it relates to the payment card industry.

The Payment Card Industry trade group recently released its guidelines for cloud security (PDF).

The document offers insight on the use of cloud computing technology, as well as guidelines for maintaining critical PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) controls in cloud environments.

Its objectives are simple: explaining common deployment and service models for cloud environments and describing how PCI DSS security may be applied, according to an article on Infoworld.com.

It explores the emerging architectural and deployment patterns for the cloud, how PCI DSS should be implemented in those patterns, and how to discover and document responsibilities around the different types of cloud implementations, including the use of public cloud providers.

According to InfoWorld, "what's important about all this work is that it removes some of the excuses for keeping cloud computing off the table at many enterprises, by allaying some of the uncertainty over compliance with existing security standards. Obviously, if the standards bodies publish guidance around the use of cloud computing providers and technology, IT systems should be able to work securely in the cloud."

Progressive Approach to Open Cloud Computing Drives Rackspace UK Expansion
Rackspace has reaffirmed its commitment to the cloud across the pond.

Rackspace is cementing its position as the open cloud company by working with Digital Realty Trust to bring a bigger United Kingdom data center facility online to serve an expanding European customer base.

"We have hired an additional 300 UK 'Rackers' in 2012 and increased our total server count by more than 10,000 over that same past year period," said Taylor Rhodes, managing director, International at Rackspace, according to an article on the Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch.com. "Our customers are aligning their IT functions to take advantage of the open cloud and I am resolutely pleased to be able to move forward with an expanded data center. The age of the open cloud has arrived and our market success and subsequent expansion is testimony to that fact."

This energy-efficient data center expansion facilitates Rackspace Hosting's leadership position as an open cloud company, delivering open technologies worldwide. January 2013 saw an agreement signed to build up to 10-megawatts of UK data center space with a strategic construction plan designed to bring a total of five "data halls" online in stages.