Nearly half of European IT departments continue to keep their data on-premise, citing data protection fears, according to a survey.
Many of the 46% of firms keeping their data in on-premise servers blamed overly cautious company policies or data sensitivity as reasons why they shunning cloud, according to storage company Iron Mountain, which carried out the study.
Forrester Research labelled such companies ‘server huggers’ in 2011, but Iron Mountain found that things are beginning to change outside of the healthcare, manufacturing and financial industries.
Just over a third of respondents now include the cloud as part of a hybrid strategy that encompasses tape and disc on-premise as well.
A further 8% plan to introduce cloud in the next year or two, due to surging data volumes and growing confidence in the security of cloud.
Christian Toon, head of information risk at Iron Mountain, said: "Data storage has become a business-critical issue rather than a back-office activity. Most still feel most at ease when they can see and touch their data storage racks – often for very sensible business reasons.
"However, evolving security risks and the growing need to harness the full value of information is making on-site server storage untenable in the long-term. We would advise IT teams to transition to a rich, blended platform that includes a secure off-site data centre and cloud solutions."
