70% of IT professionals using cloud at work

Almost three-quarters of IT professionals use cloud-based applications at work with security and backup in the cloud becoming more common within businesses.

According to a survey from Spiceworks, 70% of IT professionals are using cloud-based web hosting applications, with 60% using cloud-based security and 30% backup applications.

The most common cloud-based security application is anti-spam, with 41% of respondents currently using one and another 3% planning to do so in the next six months. A total of 22% are using cloud based antivirus software with an additional 4% planning to do so within six months.

The benefits of putting security in the cloud were: no special hardware to maintain (76%); automatic software updates (63%); ease of management (63%); low set-up costs (41%); and combines multiple measures in one (35%).

Cloud-based backup will be taken up by an additional 13% in the next six months, said the survey. It also found that 19% of respondents plan to back-up 100% of data online. A third of respondents (33%) said they will store 1TB or more of data in the cloud.

The main concerns with using cloud backup are: heavy bandwidth requirement (59%); risk of data loss/security breach (48%); not cost effective (46%); lack of control over infrastructure (42%); and risk of service outage or service degradation (33%).

“The challenge of maintaining specialised hardware and software is clearly driving IT professionals to cloud-based IT applications,” said Kathryn Pribish, Voice of IT programme manager at Spiceworks. 

“Vendors who can deliver the capabilities of traditional hardware/software solutions in a cost effective manner have a great opportunity to address the needs of IT professionals.”