Cost Savings, Data Protection Driving Enterprises to Cloud-Based Data Storage

Stashing infrequently-accessed or backup data in the public cloud has emerged into a viable strategy for enterprises seeking to trim their storage costs. Indeed, 59 percent of the 140 IT experts surveyed by data protection specialist Druva cited cost savings as the top reason they moved their data to the cloud.

That is one of many insights in the Druva 2017 AWS Cloud Data Protection Survey, published today. As the title indicates, the study focused on organizations that use Amazon Web Services (AWS) for enterprise data protection, archiving and secondary storage. As the world’s leading cloud provider, AWS is very influential in shaping the IT industry’s attitudes toward the public cloud.

Although lower storage costs are a major draw, all IT pros are convinced that the cost-savings benefits of migrating data to the cloud may never materialize. In fact, nearly half (49 percent) of respondents who are considering a move said cost was the biggest barrier to cloud storage adoption.

Data egress charges, incurred when data is transferred out of a cloud storage account, are a particularly thorny aspect of budgeting for cloud storage.

A whopping 85 percent of those polled said they would like to see egress charges go away completely. Forty-three percent called egress costs a “necessary evil” and 29 percent considered them “annoying, unnecessary additional charges,” according to the report.

Cost-conscious IT departments are also worried about deploying cloud-based data protection solutions that cover an organization that operates out multiple locations. Fearing that they may end up paying to store duplicate data, sixty-two percent of respondents said they were wary about compounding data protection costs.

Despite this, AWS appears to be having little trouble lining up customers for its storage offerings.

Sixty-three percent of respondents said they were using or considering using AWS for secondary-storage purposes. More than half (54 percent) reported that they were using AWS for data production.

“Cloud-based storage options like AWS S3 and Glacier are resilient and durable solutions that are being leveraged for secondary storage and are ultimately being coupled with data protection solutions to provide the capabilities that meet the needs of the business,” said Wendy Perilli, vice president of corporate and digital marketing for Druva, in a Dec. 14 announcement. “It gives customers the ability to be flexible with cost optimization and access control.”

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Enterprise Storage Forum. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.