5 Reasons Why Storage Is Leading In The Cloud

Cloud Storage In The Spotlight

A survey of almost 200 cloud-focused executives found that storage is the most popular cloud initiative, as organizations rush to deal with escalating data growth and disaster recovery requirements.

The promise of implementing cloud storage incrementally and increase it over time is very attractive to companies as they scale their operations.

The survey of more than 200 people, almost all of whom attended Cloud Computing Expo in New York in June or Amazon AWS re: invent in Las Vegas in November, was conducted by TwinStrata, a cloud storage vendor.

Continue on and see what executives are saying about cloud storage.

1. Storage Most Popular Cloud Initiative

The highest percentage of survey respondents, 88 percent, indicated they currently use or plan to use cloud storage. Although 50 percent of respondents said they now use cloud storage, 38 percent said they will use it. Infrastructure as a service is the most widely implemented cloud strategy with 59 percent of those surveyed saying they currently use IaaS, followed by software as a service with 57 percent of respondents now using SaaS.

Platform as a service had the lowest cloud scores, with 66 percent of those surveyed saying they use or plan to use PaaS.

2. Cloud Computing Gains Traction

Cloud computing is heading toward widespread adoption. Most of those surveyed, 50 percent, said they've used cloud computing for between one and five years.

Cloud veterans using hosted services for more than five years accounted for 10 percent. Another 25 percent said they adopted it for less than a year, while just three percent said they have no current cloud plans.

3. Scalability Valued Highly By Cloud Users

When asked what value they see in using cloud storage, survey respondents most favored the cloud storage scalability by 62 percent of current users, 52 percent of those planning to use it and 61 percent of those with no plans to use it but nonetheless valuing it.

Offsite disaster recovery also scored highly, with 68 percent of current users saying they value it, 47 percent of those planning to use cloud storage endorsing it and 26 percent of those with no plans to implement cloud storage saying they still value it.

Cloud storage costs received less attention from the survey respondents.

4. Cloud Disaster Recover Gains Large Following

The strong value placed in disaster recovery by respondents in the previous slide, with 68 percent of users endorsing it, is borne out by their belief they can quickly recover data in the cloud.

The highest percentage of those surveyed said that in the event of a disaster, they could recover data within a couple of hours, followed by those believing in a recovery time frame of within 24 hours.

5. Storage Security Tops Concerns Of Executives

Cloud storage security may be holding back greater adoption by businesses.

The biggest inhibitor to cloud storage adoption is security and loss of control, with 41 percent of current cloud storage users, 49 percent of those planning storage adoption and 61 percent of those with no plans all expressing concerns.

Cloud storage security concerns far outpaced concerns about reliability, cost, compliance and other issues.