The cloud services technology market will more than double in size – growing 126.5 percent – this year with the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market segments leading the way. The SaaS market will grow 199 percent, while the IaaS market will grow 126 percent in 2014, according to new market research from Gigaom Research and cloud security provider CipherCloud.
Security is the number one concern, as organizations move beyond “curiosity about the cloud to actual deployment,” Gigaom Research analyst George Crump, was quoted in a joint press release. “SaaS is growing at 199 percent and is the typical home for shadow IT. It is growing because end-users are impatient with IT and looking for alternatives.”
Sixty-two percent of survey respondents cited security as their top cloud concern. Cloud application performance ranked second at 44 percent, while the time needed to develop cloud-related skills ranked third at 41 percent.
IT professionals consider encryption as the key element of cloud security, according to study findings. “By encryption, it must be end-to-end, from the moment that the data leaves the network to the data being stored at rest in the cloud,” according to Gigaom and CipherCloud.
Over half the survey respondents said they had more than 10 cloud applications under development. Thirty-two percent indicated significant use of 51 or more cloud applications. That’s only the cloud apps IT staff are aware of and control, the two research providers note.
IT departments don’t have total visibility of the cloud applications and services employees across organizations are using, however, giving rise to the term “shadow IT.” Eighty-one percent of line-of-business employees admitted they use unauthorized SaaS apps. Thirty-eight percent didn’t consult IT departments because they believed they were too slow.
Communications, file sync-and-share and disaster recovery apps were the most commonly requested cloud apps, followed closely by CRM and other sales automation tools. Commenting on their study’s findings, CipherCloud Chief Marketing Officer Paige Leidig said: “The research underscores the rapid adoption of the cloud by businesses both by IT and line of business employees.
“It also reinforces security as a key concern and the importance of encryption to ensure data is fully protected and controlled.”
