A majority (73%) of Asian businesses still feel that their data is most secure when under their own IT department rather than under a cloud service provider, according to a study conducted by Data & Storage Asean (DSA).
“Trust is a major concern for all businesses, and often the perception remains that their data is safer in their own hands,” says James Forbes-May, Vice President of APAC Sales. “The idea of trusting faceless employees of a cloud provider is still an alien concept to many and cloud providers will need to invest time in addressing these concerns.”
“Many cloud providers have implemented enterprise level security standards, which are often not accessible or cost effective for SMEs to adopt on their own,” explains Forbes-May. “SMEs are realizing this as well, as the survey shows these SMEs are increasingly trusting cloud providers, with 42% stating they do trust that cloud providers can keep their data safe by providing fundamental tools and services to secure data.
Backup and data protection during Cloud Migration are biggest concerns
Commissioned by Barracuda Networks, the survey results also highlight the fact that 28 percent of respondents identified backup and data recovery as their biggest concern when moving to cloud, while 26 percent identified security as their biggest concern during migration to cloud.
“More than 50 percent of ASEAN SMEs place their biggest concerns of cloud migration on security and data protection. Data migration and protection has always been the biggest headache for businesses whether on-premises or over cloud. Data protection methods have seen tremendous innovation in the last decade,” said Forbes-May.
Lack clear cloud strategy
While cloud is now achieving heavy adoption, the overall sentiment is that SMEs lack a clear strategy in their approach to cloud implementations.
The survey showed that while 20 percent of responders were already extensively using cloud services, 71 percent said that they are not likely to adopt a cloud first strategy.
“At a macro level, the key findings of the survey show that while cloud adoption is high overall, the appetite to move the entire data center to cloud is still limited,” explains James Forbes-May, Vice President of APAC Sales. “Additionally, 69 percent of participants reported having no preference on cloud use, which points to cloud adoption among the SMEs in the region still being very reactive.”
“A Cloud First strategy is a new development in the SME industry where, businesses prioritise moving as much of their IT processes to a cloud platform in order to minimise the on-premises foot print. So while SMEs are starting to add cloud as a part of their strategy, they are not necessarily pushing everything to cloud just yet,” adds Forbes-May.