UK SMEs 'reject' cloud storage

Time and money the main barrier to cloud storage adoption for SMEs, according to research

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK are rejecting cloud as their primary storage platform and are even questioning how it might be useful to them, new research has claimed.

According to the survey by IT support company Icomm Technologies, just 13 per cent of UK SMEs are using cloud as their primary storage platform, and only one-in-five - 22 per cent - believe that cloud will become their primary means of storage in the future.

Scalability is often cited as a key incentive for businesses to migrate to cloud for storage, especially given how many SMEs in the internet space have quickly grown to become disruptive global phenomenon. However, according to Icomm's survey, UK SMEs largely expect their growth to be much less spectacular - removing one of the key rationales for cloud adoption.

Essentially, the survey suggests that UK SMEs aren't struggling with the rapid data growth associated with organisations moving to the cloud.

"With economic growth being slow and steady, it shouldn't be a surprise that data growth has followed suit. Data growth does not come out of thin air: there will always be a correlation between the performance of a business and the amount of data being produced," said Icomm IT consultant Mark Lomas.

Migrating to the cloud also requires an upfront investment in terms of finance and time, not just to make the move, but for feasibility and other studies to assess the potential benefits. But time and money are in short supply in many SMEs.

‘‘It's important to separate the hype from reality in order to understand how businesses can best manage their storage infrastructure. SMEs will often have less scope to experiment compared to a larger enterprise," said Lomas.

"Testing new solutions can be costly, meaning that if businesses want to make a change, they'll have to commit in a big way," he continued, adding: "While the cloud is likely to grow in popularity, SMEs are clearly in no rush to adopt it as their primary solution".

According to the Icomm research, almost two-thirds of SMEs still look to the storage area network (SAN) solution to meet their storage needs, while a further 16 per cent use network-attached storage (NAS) or even direct-access storage (DAS) systems.

Only eight per cent of respondents said they regarded scalability as their primary concern, with the focus more on cost and performance.

SMEs might be shunning cloud, but it's being fully embraced by larger organisations. Indeed, Mark Hall, director of global IT operations at Aviva, recently described cloud as "absolutely at the heart of our business strategy".