Before and After: The Cloud Concerns of Your Clients Post-Adoption

By Michael Brown 1

Are your clients worried about the security of their data in the cloud? If they are, there’s a good chance they’re not currently leveraging cloud-based file sharing as part of their day-to-day operations. Once a company makes the switch, security is no longer much of a concern.

At least that’s according to a recent survey by the Internap Network Services Corporation, who polled a group of 250 decision-makers from industries like software and Internet, hosting and IT infrastructure, media and entertainment, gaming, healthcare, as well as education and financial services.

So what does concern these companies once they adopt the cloud? Let’s take a look at some details from the survey:

The survey also reveals that there’s a significant difference in public cloud infrastructure concerns between the companies that are currently using such services and those that have no immediate plans to make the switch from traditional data storage services.

The findings reveal that 40 percent of those who don’t use cloud services cite security as a concern, something that only 15 percent of companies that already use these types of products are concerned about.

In fact, there are a number of concerns that top security for cloud-wise organizations, including service performance (30 percent), cost at scale (28 percent), reliability (22 percent) and compliance (16 percent).

A few things worth mentioning here:

The drop from 40 percent to 15 percent is a huge and not an outlier in one particular industry. Once adopted and once companies begin to see how certain security features work (encryption, key management, etc.) they quickly move on to other concerns, notably…

Optimizing performance and reliability. We’ve covered the myth of cloud downtime, but it’s quite reasonable for a “cloud-wise” company to have this as a concern. Luckily, this is one area where MSPs can take an active role:

Many businesses that refuse to entertain cloud solutions do so over the perceived lack of control it affords. They want their systems close to their operations. But what good is control without expertise and the ability to respond quickly? In the event of an outage, wouldn’t it be better to have a team working to get things back up online, as opposed to a lone IT administrator? Cloud vendors have invested a lot of resources in ensuring uptime, and their brand is one the line, so you can always expect to be back online as soon as possible.

Compliance. Here’s where an industry-by-industry breakdown would have been useful. Not every industry included in the survey is what we would call “data-sensitive.” While healthcare has HIPAA and retail has PCI, many industries simply don’t have to worry about issues with compliance. But for those who are governed by these regulations, ensuring compliance is a concern that will never really go away, as there are regular audits and changes to the existing laws.

MSPs need to understand that the concerns of users are totally different from the concerns of non-users. Once a company makes the transition (with your guidance, hopefully) you can start to re-direct your focus, as well as theirs.