58% of Organizations Building Hybrid Cloud - Avere

Avere Systems, Inc. released the findings of a cloud adoption study conducted on 205 respondents at the 2014 Cloud Expo New York and the 2014 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit New York.

More than half of attendees surveyed (58%) indicated that they are building hybrid cloud solutions for their organizations, which is significant as many industries look to leverage the advantages of the cloud without having to rip out their existing computing and storage infrastructures. Aside from technology companies, the survey showed that life sciences and finance organizations were most interested in adopting cloud solutions.

Over a quarter of attendees surveyed reported that their top-level executive teams were driving their organizations’ cloud strategy, followed by nearly a quarter of storage and data management professionals. A majority of respondents indicated that they plan on migrating at least some of their on-premises applications to the cloud within the next two years.

“The reality is that most organizations today are straddling between on-premises and public cloud solutions as they look to implement their cloud strategies,” said Rebecca Thompson, VP marketing, Avere. “Whether their data lives on premises or in the cloud, data movement needs to be both transparent and easily managed. At Avere, we’re making sure companies are able to leverage the numerous benefits of cloud technology without sacrificing performance, security or availability of data.“

Key findings:

Hybrid cloud Adoption – 58% of attendees are adopting a hybrid cloud strategy. Similarly, 58% of attendees plan on migrating at least some of their on-premises applications to the cloud within the next two years.
Cloud Leadership – 26% of attendees indicated that their top level executive team were driving cloud strategy within their organizations, while 22% of respondents said storage/data management teams were spearheading these decisions.
Cloud Vendors – 49% of respondents indicated that AWS is their cloud of choice for storage, with over half (56%) considering the service for object storage. 19% of respondents are considering Google and 13% Azure.

The survey responses follow industry analysts’ reflections on hybrid storage being key. Nearly half of respondents, 46% are building a hybrid cloud. 35% on their own and 11% leveraging a partner. It is also telling that 31% of respondents do not have a plan in place. This indicates that vendors need to step up and educate their customers on cloud storage options – clearly and without misdirection.

33% are planning to move over 50% of their storage to the cloud. 52% are planning to move less than 50%.

Amazon is the clear leader for cloud storage vendor being considered being named by almost half of the participants. 19% of respondents are considering Google. Microsoft Azure is being considered by 13% of the respondents.