Even as security doubts persist, a majority of organizations are opting with the cloud and virtual machines for disaster recovery and data backup, according to a vendor-backed survey of 1,473 SMB and large enterprise IT professionals.
Although only 44% of respondents said they consider the cloud to be a viable disaster recovery option, 72% are running mission-critical applications on virtual machines, according to findings from
The survey points to the elusive cost of downtime as a primary reason for the shift to the cloud even as security and reliability doubts persist. Fifty-four percent of respondents did not know the hourly cost of application downtime, while 16% pegged it at greater than $10,000 and 7% ranked it as between $5,001 and $10,000, the survey stated. And the loss of connectivity to mission-critical applications like Microsoft Exchange or Blackberry Enterprise Server crops up a few times a year for most: 16% of respondents counted downtime on three or more occasions in the past year, 21% stated twice and 32% had one instance, according to the survey.
Bob Roudebush, Neverfail’s VP of marketing, says that organizations of all sizes in the survey are witnessing the cloud as a viable avenue for all of their computing needs, including database backup.
“There are a variety of reasons why this is the case, but what it does show is that there will be a learning an adoption curve for cloud computing just like there was for virtualization, but likely much shorter,” Roudebush says. “SMEs today can prepare themselves to take advantage of the cloud when it's ready by educating themselves on their options and partnering with companies, which can help them figure out how to leverage the cloud and provide a bridge between on-premise and cloud-based computing models.”
For an infographic on the survey,
This story has been reprinted with permission from
