Small Businesses Slow to Adopt Public Cloud Storage in 2013

Drobo, Inc. announced the results of a survey of 239 SMBs and departments in larger organizations about their current storage preferences and future expectations around protecting business data.

The majority, 53%, chose hybrid storage with SSDs and auto-tiering to meet their primary business storage requirements. 46% of businesses revealed that they do not find public cloud storage a fit, with another 26% choosing to backup select data to the cloud in conjunction with an on-premises backup solution. The results indicate that SMBs are pursuing both onsite and offsite backup storage solutions.

Challenges for SMBs
Limited bandwidth and quality of network between sites were the top challenges facing 38% of SMBs when setting up offsite backup and DR solutions. The budget for a second site and the network and infrastructure for that site were also top issues for 32% of SMBs surveyed. These findings indicate that the network infrastructure, budget and bandwidth for backup and DR are distinct business challenges for SMBs and need be addressed.

Storage Strategies
Some SMBs have already considered implementing new solutions for on-premises backup. 52% of respondents revealed that for better onsite backup retention they would use SAN storage on a different box from their primary storage to save on budget. 47% of respondents said they would use deduplication in their existing backup software to more effectively carry out their backup and further reduce cost.

Respondents also revealed that when it comes to data replication to increase business continuity, data replication would be most effectively placed within their software architecture: 64% preferred a software technology fueled by new virtual appliance and hypervisor-based offerings vs. 36% who felt storage-based replication was the best place for their architecture.

Infrastructure Considerations
The infrastructure size for each SMB respondent varied, but the top challenges and motivators were relatively consistent, indicating a preference for onsite backup with SAN storage and software-based replication to meet backup needs. Of the 239 SMB or department respondents, one third used 5 or fewer servers in their business infrastructure while 20% used 50 or more servers for their business. So it seems that infrastructure size is based more on business needs than the size of the company.

"The survey findings are consistent with what we hear from the hundreds of SMB customers we interact with on our live demos every week, seeking a storage solution that meets their virtualization and data protection requirements at the right cost," said VP marketing at Drobo, Mario Blandini. "The architecture for SMBs like larger enterprises includes on-premises and offsite storage, where hybrid storage with SSDs coupled with new data protection software technologies fit the cost points for future buying decisions."

Survey Methodology
The online survey was conducted between September 21 and November 9, 2012, and asked for the opinions of SMBs (75% had fewer than 250 employees) conducting business in the U.S.

Respondents represented the following demographic: