Enterprise disconnect with in-cloud data protection strategy, survey finds

According to research announced by CTERA Networks, enterprise data protection strategies may not be fully aligned with IT modernisation initiatives driven by cloud computing. The research shows that while enterprises continue to migrate workloads to the cloud at a rapid pace, protection of cloud-based servers and applications has not fully evolved to meet enterprise requirements for business continuity and data availability.

The CTERA-commissioned study was conducted by Vanson Bourne to examine the data protection strategies of 400 IT decision makers and IT specialists in organisations using the cloud for application deployment at US, German and French organisations.

Notable findings from the research include:

• Organisations are moving to the cloud at a rapid pace to realise efficiency gains, real-time scalability and cost savings. More than two-thirds (67%) of organisations deploy more than 25% of their applications in the cloud, and 37% plan to grow their cloud use by at least 25%, if not more. In addition, 54% of organisations are embracing a hybrid cloud strategy that leverages both on-premises and cloud services.

• Two out of three companies (66%) strongly agree or somewhat agree there is less focus on backing up applications in the cloud due to a misconception that the cloud is inherently resilient compared to on-premises applications. This is not a surprise considering that 62% of organisations rely on the cloud provider to back up applications running on their platform.

• As more enterprise applications move to the cloud and threats such as ransomware become more pervasive, the criticality of business continuity prevails. Some 39% of respondents claim that ensuring business continuity is the highest priority when backing up and protecting applications and data running in the cloud. 71% of organisations cite data protection and availability as one of the biggest challenges when moving to the cloud.

• With more than a third of respondents (36%) reporting that the loss of data in the cloud would be more catastrophic than their data center crashing, and 14 percent of respondents claiming it would cost them their jobs, the need to get a cloud strategy right the first time is clear.

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