Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Half of storage customers considering cloud computing, survey finds

Growing data volumes key driver for cloud storage

More than half of storage customers in a recent survey say they are considering offloading some of their storage needs to cloud providers, despite concerns about security.

Growing data volumes are the key driver for organizations considering cloud storage, followed by limits on current storage capacity, the large footprints of data centers, lengthy data retention requirements and the cost of storage infrastructure, the survey found.

The survey was conducted by backup vendor CommVault and involved its own customers, so results may not be representative of the IT industry as a whole. CommVault surveyed 535 companies, about half of which have more than 1,000 employees, and nearly 60% of which manage between 6TB and 75TB of data.

Fifty-two percent of respondents are considering cloud storage services now or in the future, but have not necessarily made the plunge into the cloud yet.

Customers said cloud storage could help with disaster recovery, replace old tape drives, reduce hardware expenses and introduce more flexible pricing models. But even those who are interested in the cloud have concerns. More than 75% of the survey sample said they have some concerns about moving data to a storage cloud, with 30% saying security is their biggest worry. One out of five customers said reliability is the biggest roadblock.

Recent outages by cloud service providers such as Rackspace and Amazon probably aren't instilling confidence in customers, and the cyberattack on Google has also spurred debate over the safety of cloud computing.  

IT pros who attended the Storage Networking World conference last October said they worry about security, legal issues and the portability of data, and that cloud services aren’t yet mature enough to handle some types of sensitive information.

Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Amazon, CommVault, Google
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: cloud computing, storage
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Work Life Web 2011
    The 2011 WorkLifeWeb research shows that, while the new social Web is a potential tool for corporate success, there are ‘social media growing pains’ in evidence among both frontline workers and their managers.
    Learn more »
  • SOA Adoption for Dummies
    This book describes our approach to SOA adoption, which we call SOA rocket science. SOA adoption, like a real-world rocket, experiences a danger zone between blast-off and the weightlessness of orbit. When fully realized, SOA can transform your business. But until firmly established, your SOA dreams can plummet back to earth.
    Learn more »
  • Webcast: Innovation Driving UC Everywhere: From Mobile to the Cloud and Beyond
    Polycom announced it is acquiring HP's Visual Collaboration Business Unit, including HP's Halo products and Managed Services, and the two companies have entered into a deep strategic agreement through which Polycom will become HP's exclusive partner for telepresence and video UC solutions. This will create an end-to-end UC solution that will deliver to our joint customers an unparalleled user experience, interoperability, investment protection, and ease of deployment. Watch this webcast.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments