3/4 of Cloud Storage Users Could Recover Data Within 24 hours

A recent survey revealed user attitudes
and adoption plans for cloud storage:

• Nearly three-quarters of cloud storage users estimated they could recover their data within 24 hours
• One out of every eight organizations that do not use cloud storage responded that it would take "more than a week" to recover their data

Respondents were attendees at the Cloud Computing Expo at Javits Center in New York June 11-14, an audience expected to offer more sophisticated insight into the use of cloud computing than a general IT audience.

73% of respondents have implemented some form of cloud computing already, with more than a quarter (28%) having done so for three or more years.

Of the respondents, more people have implemented or plan to implement cloud storage than any other cloud computing initiative, including software-as-a-service.

Among other desirable benefits, more than a third of respondents indicated they value:

• off-site data protection for disaster recovery (40%),
• easier access to backup/archive (37%) and
• the comparative affordability of cloud storage over hardware (35%).

Nearly three-quarters of cloud storage users estimated they could recover their data within 24 hours (72%), a 10-point difference from non-cloud-storage users (62%).

In contrast, more than one in eight organizations that do not use cloud storage responded that it would take "more than a week" to recover their data in the event of a disaster, whereas only three% of cloud storage users said the same.

Nearly 57% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "It seems like we are always running out of storage."

The greatest adoption of cloud computing thus far is in small organizations (between 51-250 employees) and large enterprises (more than 5,000 employees). Half of respondents representing organizations with 51-250 employees say they have implemented some form of cloud computing for three years or more, and 35% of organizations with 5000 or more employees. Smaller organizations are turning to cloud computing as an easier to manage, lower cost alternative to traditional computing, while global enterprises often seek the accessibility of cloud computing as they seek to support a geographically dispersed workforce.

The survey was sponsored by TwinStrata, Inc., in cloud-based data storage, backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Results of the survey A Snapshot into Cloud Storage Adoption – June 2012 (registration needed)