Intel Security Survey: Cloud Budgets Swell, But 87% Have Trust Issues

Intel Security on Thursday released a report based on a survey of 1,200 IT decision-makers with responsibility for cloud security. The poll asked about cloud investment priorities, and the results show both opportunity and challenge for the channel.

A top-level finding: Eighty percent of respondent organizations’ IT budgets will be spent on cloud services in less than 18 months. And we’re not talking just SaaS — the highest percentage of use (81 percent) is actually for IaaS, compared with 60 percent for SaaS.

A key factor in companies tapping the brakes, no surprise, is security. Just 13 percent say they completely trust public cloud services, even though just 23 percent have actually experienced data loss or breaches with their cloud providers. Difficulty migrating services or data (27 percent), high costs and fees/poor value (25 percent) and lack of visibility into cloud-provider operations (25 percent) affected more respondents.

Still, Richard Steranka, SVP of global channel operations at Intel Security, told Channel Partners that the security industry needs to do more.

“Businesses and governments are just beginning to see the true power of cloud computing and the role it will play in moving them forward,” said Steranka. “As vendors, we have to arm partners and end customers with better education to trust in the cloud and advance its adoption.”

Specifically, he says the industry must prioritize proactive defense.{ad}

Survey respondents hail from North America, Europe, Brazil and Australia, with the United States the largest single source, and from companies ranging from 251 employees to more than 5,000. They weighed in on cloud-adoption plans across SaaS, IaaS and PaaS in public, private and hybrid setups, as well as trust in security-as-a-service offerings.

Other results of interest to the channel include: 

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The report is available now for free download and includes insights from the Cloud Security Alliance and SANS. Intel Security, which in 2014 changed its name from McAfee Security, bundles a variety of products under a Security Connected framework and has reseller and MSP partner programs under recently appointed channel chief Ken McCray, who says that his priorities are providing solutions to solve and automate customers’ security challenges, focusing sales and executive engagement on mutual goals, and engaging in financially rewarding opportunities that exceed corporate objectives. Next month Channel Partners will report from the Intel Security Americas Partner Summit, which the company this year unbundled from its larger FOCUS event.

Later today, attendees at Intel’s Security Through Innovation Summit can attend a session discussing the report’s implications for federal government cloud deployments.

Follow executive editor @LornaGarey on Twitter.