Cloud storage scalability ranks #1 on 2017's IT wish lists

When asked to share their top strategy for managing their organisation’s data storage in 2017, one third of IT decision makers responding in Germany, the UK and the US, ranked 'having cloud storage that scales up or down according to my organisation’s needs' as their number one wish in 2017. Scalability was cited by nearly twice as many as those who selected the next highest response, outranking other mission-critical IT demands. The 2017 wish list unveiled by this research included:

• 33% – Deploy cloud storage that scales up and down according to my organisation’s needs
• 17% – Obtain stronger Service Level Agreements (SLAs) from my organisation’s cloud storage vendor
• 13% – Deploy new storage hardware
• 11% – Deploy storage-as-a-service to make management easier
• 11% – Enjoy important storage updates in the cloud that are also available on-premise
• Employ other strategies including features to complete mundane storage tasks (nine percent), getting new storage software to provision the organisation’s data (seven percent), and other options such as budgeting and process improvement assistance (one percent)

The survey demonstrated that IT decision makers are frequently relying on the public cloud. However, concerns around the integrity of data and level of service from cloud vendors have yet to be addressed. The second most popular wish for IT decision makers in both the UK and US this year was 'stronger service level agreements from my organisation’s cloud storage vendor,' demonstrating issues around ongoing maintenance, proactive support from the vendor, ongoing system monitoring and 100% uptime. Meanwhile, German respondents indicated that 'getting important storage features in the cloud that we have on-premise' was second on the list.

IT leaders around the world were remarkably united in their sentiment on their desire for scalability, with minor differences:

• 15% of UK IT leaders ranked strong SLAs as their main wish – tied second place with deploying software-as-a-service features so as to make their architectures more manageable
• Twice as many US IT leaders wished for stronger SLAs, at 20% of respondents, than their counterparts in Germany, at 11%
• Unlike their peers in the UK or US, German IT leaders ranked the need to get services to complete mundane storage tasks markedly higher, at 14% of total German responses, compared to nine percent in the UK and just six percent in the US. This demand for freedom from the mundane tasks was tied with deploying storage-as-a-service so IT management is easier. German respondents also were interested in obtaining important on-premise features in the cloud, ranking this as the second most important item they would wish for in 2017, at 15% of total German respondents.
• Organisational size had little to no impact on IT ranking of 2017 wish list items. Responses from IT leaders in organisations with between 1,000 and 3,000 employees, and from enterprises with over 3,000 employees, followed the same ranking as the aggregate, and their percentage wish list items varied by only a percentage point or two.

Results corroborate other industry research showing that scalability is the #1 reason for moving to the cloud in the first place (at 51%), followed by business agility (46%) and cost (43%). They also echo numerous IT leader remarks on their own priority rankings of what they seek from the cloud storage vendors that serve them.

This new survey shows that, whether in the public or private cloud, IT decision makers need a flexible, scalable and reliable data storage solution first and foremost – storage that works according to the organisation’s short-term needs, but that can also rapidly adapt over time. The survey included 400 IT leaders  – 100 in Germany, 100 in the UK, and 200 in the US – who commented during late November 2016. The responses were sourced by the independent research firm Vanson Bourne.