Who’s afraid of the cloud? You might be surprised to hear that lots of people are—possibly even your own channel customers.

What are they afraid of? Typically, it’s the unknowns. Once their data and applications are moved to the cloud, how will they know they’re secure? Is their customers’ privacy protected? What happens if their cloud provider is hacked or suffers a major power outage? And where is all that data, anyway?

Customers have other concerns, too. In a recent RightScale survey of more than 1,000 companies, cloud beginners—those working on proof-of-concept or initial cloud projects—were asked to list their top cloud concerns. They answered: security (cited by 31 percent); compliance (30 percent); managing multiple cloud services (28 percent); integration to internal systems (28 percent); and governance/control (26 percent).

These concerns are real: they could even be keeping your customers from moving to the cloud and enjoying the technology’s many benefits.

So what can you do to overcome customers’ fear factor? Plenty.

To start? Education. But don’t worry, classrooms, textbooks and other pedagogical tools aren’t required. Instead, simply sit down with your customers, listen to their concerns, and address those concerns with clear, concise and accurate information. As Richard Cummins says, “When people ask us, ‘What is this cloud?’ we reply, ‘You’ve had a website for how many years now? Where do you think it’s been?’” Cummins, head of ISOCNET, a regional channel partner in the greater Cincinnati area, adds: “It makes them feel better, because until now, the cloud’s been a mystery. They realize, ‘Hey, I’ve been in the cloud for years already.’ At that point, it’s an easier sell.”

That could mean showing customers that the cloud—far from presenting a security risk—is actually safer and more secure than what the customer currently has. “When an SMB customer tells us they’re concerned about security, I look around their shop and start checking off things that are not secure,” explains Mike Aquino, director of cloud services at Cetan Corp., a Chesapeake, Va.-based solutions provider. “I tell them, ‘Making this secure will cost such-and-such amount. But if you go to the cloud, that’s already done for you. You don’t have to pay extra for that security.’”

Sharing success cases can help, and unless you’re new to offering cloud services, they shouldn’t be hard to find. The RightScale survey found that more than 85 percent of companies are using the public cloud, and roughly 95 percent either run Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or are experimenting with it.

When it comes to the cloud, the only thing the channel has to fear is fear itself. Understanding customers’ fears, and helping overcome them, is the channel’s new top