Survey finds 63 percent of enterprises prefer private cloud storage solutions over SaaS alternatives

PALO ALTO, USA & PETAH TIKVAH, ISRAEL: About 63 percent of enterprises prefer private cloud storage solutions over public offerings like Dropbox, according to new research announced by CTERA Networks.

The research findings are included in CTERA's 2014 Enterprise Cloud Storage Report, a research study of 200 IT professionals conducted in early 2014 by independent panel research firm Research Now. The report examines the state of the cloud storage usage in the enterprise, and the measures being taken by IT departments to improve the security of cloud storage offerings in their organizations.

Key findings include:

* Organizations are racing to establish contemporary cloud storage solutions that they can control. Of organizations that have implemented or are considering a file sync & share (FSS) offering, 63 percent indicated that they favor a private cloud storage solution run either on hosted ("virtual private") infrastructure or in their own datacenter, with larger enterprises of 10,000 employees or more stating a preference for a completely private cloud.

* The enterprise is moving quickly to deliver the collaborative and mobility benefits of cloud storage while also meeting their own internal control and privacy policies.

* 25 percent of organizations have already implemented private cloud file sync and share tools, while 20 percent of organizations have implemented cloud storage gateways.

* 45 percent of organizations are considering private cloud file sync & share tools, while 38 percent of organizations are considering implementing cloud storage gateways.

* SaaS-based cloud storage offerings are creating organizational havoc. Thirty-one percent of respondents indicated that they have experienced corporate data leakage in 2013 as a result of employees sharing files via often-unsanctioned FSS services. Additionally, 71 percent are concerned or extremely concerned about data breaches.

* To prevent data leakage, 55 percent of organizations with 30,000 employees or more expressly forbid the usage of SaaS-based file-sharing solutions.