A new report published by International Data Corporation reveals that the need for business continuity will continue to grow in importance among organizations of all types and sizes. However, to date, this has not translated to an early opportunity for cloud-based business continuity solutions. The IDC study, which looked at the knowledge and use of different types of public cloud storage services, reveals that the opportunity for cloud-based storage continues to evolve as users and service providers explore the possibilities for different storage services (it costs $8K if you are interested in the whole thing).
Laura DuBois, program vice president, Storage Software at IDC noted:
“Discrete business continuity services delivered via a public cloud remain an untapped opportunity for suppliers. There are very few offerings that enable an on-premise application or system to failover to shared infrastructure in a public cloud. However, what firms increasingly require is continuity of business. They need this continuity of IT processing without bearing the cost of standing up additional cold or standby infrastructure and initiating a restore process. As public cloud storage offerings continue to take hold, we expect to see suppliers start to capitalize on this opportunity by leveraging virtual infrastructure.”
According to the IDC study, knowledge of public cloud storage offerings is greatest for backup and primary file storage. Business continuity services are the least well known, and this is due to the lack of broad availability of this type of capability. Among those surveyed, only 37.3% were able to articulate a position for their firm on their intentions on business continuity services. Conversely, just under three-fourths (71.3%) were able to articulate a position on public cloud backup.
