Twenty-four percent of cloud adopters move back to on-premise systems

How hard can a cloud be?
How hard can a cloud be?

Ninety percent of companies are using some form of cloud computing, according to a study by CompTIA, a non-profit IT trade association. But the transition to the cloud hasn't been easy.

Despite near-ubiquitous adoption of the cloud, more than one out of every four businesses (28%) reported the transition from cloud experimentation to non-critical use as requiring significant effort. For those businesses that progressed from the experimental stage to critical to business processes, 63% reported the transition to require significant effort.

The arduous transition didn't work for significant number of respondents. Twenty-four percent of businesses that moved from an on-premise system to a public cloud eventually moved back to an on-premise system.

Use cases

Fifty-nine percent of the survey respondents said they use cloud computing for storage. Forty-eight percent use the technology for business continuity and disaster recovery; and 44% use the cloud to maintain information security.

Despite the effort required to adopt the cloud, the study found a significant portion of respondents are engaged in their second cloud migration. Forty-four percent of respondents have moved infrastructure or applications from one public cloud to another. One-in-four respondents have moved from a public cloud to a private cloud.

CompTIA's Fifth Annual Trends in Cloud Computing study is based on responses from 400 IT and business professionals and executives from 400 IT firms. Surveys were conducted in June and July 2014.