Businesses rethinking their cloudy decision-making

By Michael
March 29, 2012

Most IT managers can be forgiven for their rush to the cloud in recent years. Marketing buzz from industry pundits, pressure from high-level executives and case studies from competitors seemed to suggest anyone standing in the way of cloud migration would be a fool. But as companies come to grips with the gap between expectation and reality, many are second-guessing their decisions.

Following the cloud crowd

Cloud technology has been a disruptive force in the business community, promising a new era of flexible, scalable and cost-efficient operations. Once the first few brave souls tested the waters and reported some dramatic early successes, a flood of others ran to the cloud out of fear that they could get left behind.

As a result, the latest research from StorageCraft and Symform has revealed that four out of every 10 companies currently use the cloud as either a primary or secondary data backup solution. A number of ambitious organizations are delving even deeper into the cloud, placing the technology front and center in their operations. According to telecom solutions provider RingCentral, nearly six in 10 small and medium-sized business owners now host more than half of their mission-critical applications in the cloud.

Anyone seen my data?

Putting all your eggs in one basket is a risky move (particularly when that proverbial basket is thousands of miles away on your cloud providers’ servers). By outsourcing your media management responsibilities to the cloud, you are inherently trusting the vendor to keep that information safe and available for when you need it most.

Unfortunately, retrieving data from cloud backup systems continues to be a primary challenge that has inspired few reliable solutions.

Going back to the study sponsored by StorageCraft and Symform, two-thirds of respondents declared backup procedures a problem area in their cloud storage plans. In fact, just 15 percent of cloud customers were “very satisfied” with their current cloud-based protocol.

Calling on an old friend

While so many companies seemed eager to abandon their current backup tape management plans and jump to the cloud, many are finding that their hasty decisions have put business continuity and disaster recovery plans up in the air. There is a reason that tape has been a mainstay in corporate media management plans for decades. Tape is affordable, reliable, durable and always there when you need it most. Instead of chasing after the next best thing, maybe it’s time to appreciate the friends you already have.

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