One-third of shops using cloud storage vendors, more buying in

Slowly, but surely, cloud storage vendors are scooping up organizations' data and tucking it away in the ether. Right now, our survey shows that nearly one-third (30%) of storage shops have recently purchased services from cloud storage vendors and almost half (48%) plan to add more or finally take the plunge and start using cloud storage.

For most companies, commitment to using cloud storage vendors is still on the modest side, with more than half of service users currently storing 25 TB or less of data in their storage clouds. On the higher end, 6% of our survey takers reported that they have more than 100 TB of data in their storage clouds. Overall, the average amount of data that companies have sent to the cloud is 32 TB -- not a huge chunk of data perhaps, but it still represents about 22% of those users' total storage capacity.

Backup (62%) is still the primary app for those using cloud storage. Thirty-nine percent say they are using cloud storage vendors as part of their DR plan -- a fast-growing use case for cloud storage. Data archiving (35%), collaboration and file sharing (35%), and primary storage (31%) are all popular ways of using cloud storage services today.

The concerns that have dogged cloud storage adoption for years haven't changed much. Number 1 on users' lists of concerns is security, with 54% saying that they still worry about how their data is handled and managed in the cloud. The next two biggest concerns are money related (surprise!) -- the cost of cloud storage capacity (33%) and network and transaction fees (25%). Interestingly, only 19% worry about bandwidth issues related to accessing their data and a mere 15% have anxieties about their cloud storage vendors' uptime.