New research from Druva has uncovered some underlying cost complaints from users of cloud firm Amazon Web Services (AWS). While cloud delivers unprecedented confidence in data protection for most, questions remain over the cost benefits of egress charges and redundant data proliferation.
Cost savings is the top reason for moving to the cloud, according to 59% of IT staff surveyed. Other major motivators included simplicity (cited by 42%), higher availability (41%), improved security (36%) and better management (35%). Yet despite the many perceived advantages of moving company architecture to the cloud, IT pros are noticing biting costs further along the road.
Druva’s research identified a pattern of “aggressive adoption” of cloud data storage, supporting Gartner’s estimate that over 80% of IT pros will be pressured by business management to evaluate migrating their data centres to cloud Iaas. Just over half (54%) of respondents said they are already using the cloud for purposes of data protection. Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents expressed strong interest in cloud computing based on a sense of confidence in data recovery.
Use cases of cloud computing are multifarious; nearly two in three professionals (63%) plan to adopt AWS cloud for secondary storage. Just over half (55%) are considering the cloud for archiving.
A disgruntled 43% of IT business users branded egress costs a “necessary evil” with more than one in four (29%) deeming them “annoying, unnecessary additional charges.”
On top of this, 59% of respondents expressed concern over the mounting costs of duplicate data, with even more (69%) begrudging compounding data protection costs as a result of having multiple business sites. A staggering 84% think egress charges should be done away with altogether.
“Ultimately, companies are interested in simplifying costs and centralizing data management across workloads, regions, and heterogeneous environments,” the report said. “Organizations are seeking to gain much higher confidence in the way that they apply retention policies as well as deliver on their SLAs while gaining the scalability and mobility that the cloud can provide.
