Fortune 1000 firms shun public cloud storage

Computerworld - Only 10% of large corporations are considering the public cloud as a place to store even their lowest tier of data for archive purposes, according to a survey by TheInfoPro, a market research firm.

The survey of 247 Fortune 1000 corporations was released last month. Asked about storage-as-a-service, 87% of the respondents indicated that they had no plans to use the public cloud, 10% said that they would use it, and 3% indicated that they weren't sure.

Large corporations are worried about turning their data over to an external service; they're also concerned about performance, said Marco Coulter, an analyst at TheInfoPro. "We're seeing infrastructure in the cloud. We're seeing applications in the cloud, email in the cloud, HR and CRM in the cloud, but [storage] is the piece that doesn't make sense for them," he said.

Coulter added that, given the survey results, it isn't surprising that cloud storage vendors such as Iron Mountain, Cirtas and EMC have recently pulled back from the market.

Private cloud adoption was a different story, however, with most respondents saying they face virtually no obstacles or challenges when it comes to deploying private clouds.

The survey also showed that automated data tiering is one of today's hottest storage initiatives.

This version of this story was originally published in Computerworld's print edition. It was adapted from an article that appeared earlier on Computerworld.com.

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