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Small Businesses Slow to Adopt Public Cloud Storage in 2013

While small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have been quick to adopt cloud-based services, the majority is opting for hybrid storage over public cloud, according to a new industry report.

In a survey of 239 SMBs about their current storage preferences, more than half (53 percent) chose hybrid storage with SSDs and auto-tiering to meet their primary business storage requirements. The survey findings are consistent with what data storage provider Drobo, which conducted the survey, sees on a regular basis.

“The survey findings are consistent with what we hear from the hundreds of SMB customers we interact with on our live demos every week, seeking a storage solution that meets their virtualization and data protection requirements at the right cost,” Mario Blandini, vice president of marketing at Drobo, said in a statement.

Overall, the results indicate that SMBs are pursuing both onsite and offsite backup storage solutions, with 46 percent of businesses revealing that they do not find public cloud storage a fit, with another 26 percent choosing to back up select data to the cloud in conjunction with an on-premises backup solution.

“The architecture for SMBs like larger enterprises includes on-premises and offsite storage, where hybrid storage with SSDs coupled with new data protection software technologies fit the cost points for future buying decisions,” Blandini added.

When setting up offsite backup and disaster recovery solutions, the top challenges facing 38 percent of SMBs are limited bandwidth and quality of network between sites. The budget for a second site and the network and infrastructure for that site were also top issues for 32 percent of SMBs surveyed. These findings indicate that the network infrastructure, budget and bandwidth for backup and disaster recovery are distinct business challenges for SMBs and need be addressed.

Some SMBs in the survey have already considered implementing new solutions for on-premises backup. Fifty-two percent of respondents revealed that for better onsite backup retention they would use SAN storage on a different box from their primary storage to save on budget. Forty-seven percent of respondents said they would use deduplication in their existing backup software to more effectively carry out their backup and further reduce cost.

In addition, when it comes to data replication to increase business continuity, survey respondents said data replication would be most effectively placed within their software architecture: 64 percent preferred a software technology fueled by new virtual appliance and hypervisor-based offerings versus 36 percent who felt storage-based replication was the best place for their architecture.

The infrastructure size for each SMB respondent varied, but the top challenges and motivators were relatively consistent, indicating a preference for onsite backup with SAN storage and software-based replication to meet backup needs. Of the 239 SMB or department respondents, one-third used five or fewer servers in their business infrastructure while 20 percent used 50 or more servers for their business.

Want to learn more about cloud computing solutions geared specifically towards small to medium-sized businesses?  Don’t miss the Cloud4SMB Expo, collocated with ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at Cloud4SMB Expo. Follow us on Twitter.