InformationWeek Analytics Research Finds Many Struggling With Public Cloud Storage

  • Jun 28, 2011
InformationWeek Analytics, a service for peer-based IT research and analysis, recently announced the release of its latest research report; Cloud Storage: Changing Dynamics Beyond Services encompasses analysis of our first-ever public cloud storage survey results and guides readers in making smart cloud storage decisions.

More than 360 business technology decision-makers responded to this poll. The results found that of the 360 respondents, 25 percent use or plan to use public cloud storage, 37 percent have no plans to use public cloud storage, while the other 38 percent are assessing how to proceed.

The report was created by Michael Biddick, president and CTO of Fusion PPT.

Research Summary:

While off-site services may have the potential to tame the voracious storage beast, most respondents are skeptical when it comes to moving valued business data to a public cloud. Security, privacy and regulatory constraints lead the list of concerns; absence of a concrete business case and worries about lack of control, potential data loss, data availability and reliability/performance also factor into companies' reluctance to store their information in the public cloud.

Findings:
* Only 15% of survey respondents say they currently use public storage services, and only 10% expect to explore adoption within the next two years.
* Security concerns (73%) top the list of reasons companies steer clear of public cloud storage; privacy concerns (54%) rank second, followed by regulatory/legal constraints (36%).
* 59% of survey respondents cite email as the application most responsible for data storage growth; 53% point to retention policies as a factor.
* Backup, at 76%, is the storage function moved most to the public cloud, followed by disaster recovery/business continuity (70%), file archiving
(68%) and email archiving (65%); primary data storage is next, at 34%.
* The ability to move data between cloud and on-premises storage is the most important feature (rated 4.4 out of 5) for companies evaluating or using a cloud storage service, followed closely by on-demand access, data encryption and ability to establish/enforce retention policy (all 4.3).
* 76% say they're concerned about storage expenses, yet nearly half don't know how much storage costs, and 8% do not manage their storage resources.
* HP (30%) leads in current or planned use of cloud storage, followed by EMC (26%), Amazon S3 (25%) and IBM (21%).


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