The survey, which was conducted in August and September 2014, interviewed 900 IT specialists in nine European countries about their opinions on public cloud usage. In addition to the trend towards the cloud, the survey results highlighted the following details:
The DACH region is skeptical: Almost one in four respondents (26 percent) stated that they do not use the public cloud. The differences between the individual markets were significant: Skepticism is higher in Austria and Switzerland, where 54 percent and 51 percent respectively state that they are still not using public clouds, and in Germany where 33 percent state they are not using public clouds. By comparison, the level of rejection is much lower in Spain (10 percent) and the UK (15 percent).
Business units have a say in the matter, but IT is in the driver’s seat: The IT department drives the use of public cloud services in most companies (54 percent), with business unit managers being the second most influential (30 percent). Only one in five respondents (21 percent) believe that the departments buy cloud services themselves without coordinating with the IT department.
Cost reductions vs. security misgivings: Public cloud opinions are impacted by a number of factors – 58 percent believe the public cloud offers cost savings, 40 percent believe the public cloud can increase flexibility and scalability, 51 percent believe security remains a top concern with public cloud deployments, 39 percent believe compliance problems exist with public cloud deployments and 35 percent do not want to give up their control with public cloud deployments.
Security misgivings a concern in both public cloud and on-premises deployments: The majority of respondents (66 percent) does not believe that company information is any safer in the company's own infrastructure. Only 27 percent agree that secret services could gain access to data in the public cloud unnoticed, while some 22 percent of respondents believe that secret services could access data on a company's own servers unnoticed.
Collaboration takes place in the cloud: Data exchange/transmission (38 percent), messaging (34 percent) and storage (34 percent) are the areas in which the respondents want to use the public cloud services most frequently, while only 24 percent use or plan to use the cloud for security.
Security is a must: In order to protect cloud services, some 57 percent of respondents are planning the implementation of additional network security, and 53 percent additional application security. Only 18 percent are not planning any additional security measures.
Wieland Alge, VP and General Manager EMEA at Barracuda said: "We see the growing acceptance of public cloud services as an indication that a more pragmatic stance will prevail following a phase of uncertainty. There are few companies that will ignore the potential cost benefits, flexibility and scalability associated with the cloud. The risks of the public cloud are perceived very differently across Europe, but many companies plan to reduce the risk through the implementation of additional IT security measures. Public cloud services such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS are included in numerous IT department's solution package.“
