More than a third (36%) of UK businesses with revenues up to
£500m are planning or are considering using
cloud hosting, according to a survey.
The most likely reasons for using cloud hosting, according to
the 600 companies surveyed, was for extra server capacity to boost
processing and distribute workload.
Cloud hosting can provide extra capacity faster and at a lower
cost than traditional hosting, said Lew Moorman, chief strategy
officer at
Rackspace Hosting.
Traditional hosting needs more pre-planning and does not have
the cost advantages of using pooled resources that are managed
automatically by software, he said.
Data storage and backup was the next likely use for cloud
hosting identified in the survey, followed by application
hosting.
Cloud hosting is able to cut storage costs by up to 80%, but
Moorman said it was best suited to non-sensitive data and large
audio and video files.
Traditional hosting still has a role to play because it offers
greater controls around personal data and that is why some
companies are choosing a hybrid model, he said.
Lower cost is the most likely reason for adopting cloud hosting
in the credit crunch, but 57% of UK companies do not understand the
concept, the survey found.
The reasons UK companies gave for not adopting cloud hosting
were concerns about reliability (15%), untested technology (14%),
and
security (10%).
Moorman said there is a need for education on the topic as well
as standard terminology, pricing and application programming
interfaces to spur greater adoption.
"More UK companies will also look to using cloud hosting in
their IT mix as the technology matures and positive case studies
begin to emerge," he said.