Enterprises increase cloud storage spending

Wasabi Technologies is releasing Part 3 of Wasabi’s 2023 Global Cloud Storage Index, analysing the key findings from EMEA-based organisations. The series, commissioned by Wasabi Technologies and conducted by Vanson Bourne, seeks to uncover the changing attitudes toward public cloud storage adoption, the factors that influence storage buying decisions, and the top priorities when it comes to budget, use cases, security, and cloud data migration. 

“EMEA is an incredibly important segment of the overall cloud storage market. This global region and market have unique security, data movement, data sovereignty and accessibility requirements” said Andrew Smith, senior manager of strategy and market intelligence at Wasabi Technologies, and a former IDC analyst. “These unique requirements can add complexity to cloud infrastructure decisions and migration initiatives. Nonetheless, our survey data indicates EMEA is poised to continue expanding both stored volumes in the cloud, as well as their cloud storage budgets, as we move further into 2023.”  

According to the survey findings, 83% of EMEA respondents expect to increase the amount of data they store in the public cloud in the next year, and 81% plan to increase their budgets for public cloud storage. Additionally, the survey found that EMEA organisations are prioritising placement of data in cloud (both public and private) environments, as opposed to traditional IT environments. However, many EMEA organisations struggle to manage the fee and cost structures associated with public cloud storage. 

EMEA prioritising cloud storage over on-premises storage, but security concerns remain paramount

87% of enterprises migrated storage from on-premises to public cloud in 2022, with Germany and the Netherlands exceeding the EMEA average at 98%, and 97% respectively. UK and France came in below the regional average at 78% and 85% respectively.

90% of EMEA enterprises expect the amount of data they store in the cloud to remain the same or increase in 2023.

More resilient infrastructure (43%), avoiding costs on refreshing old or purchasing new hardware (40%), and need to scale resources (38%) were the top three factors driving migration from on-premises to cloud. France stood out from the rest of EMEA respondents, with access to global regions chosen as their top factor (44%)

When it comes to cloud migration challenges by country, UK and Germany respondents both indicated that meeting compliance and regulatory requirements was their top issue.

Regarding the specific regulatory requirements on the mind of EMEA respondents: GDPR was far and away the number one choice for UK organizations. r France and Germany both ranked ISO standards at their top requirement

In France 40% of the companies stated that the lack of cloud platform experience/insufficient training is their biggest security concern. UK respondents ranked unauthorised access or insight into one's data as their top security concern. Germany ranked lack of storage identity and access management policies/tools as their number one cloud storage security concern. And finally, respondents from Netherlands chose lack of native backup, DR, and data protection tools as their primary security concern.

When it comes to cloud storage vendor selection criteria, EMEA also put security at the top of the list, ranking “data protection, security and compliance features/capabilities” as the number one consideration.

However, there are important nuances by country. UK respondents indicated price / total cost of ownership is their top vendor selection consideration. In contrast, sustainability was the primary vendor selection criteria for France and Netherlands respondents.

EMEA enterprises plan to increase spending on cloud storage, but struggle with managing cost and fees

EMEA enterprises allocate an average of 14% of their total IT budget to cloud storage, compared to the global average of 12%, and 81% plan to increase their cloud storage budget in 2023.

IT initiatives (51%), business initiatives (47%) and new data security, backup and recovery requirements (43%) were the top three reasons driving budget increases in public cloud storage over the next 12 months.

52% of the EMEA organisations surveyed reported going over budget on public cloud storage spending over the last year, with the UK being the most efficient (only 45% of UK enterprises went over budget).

Top reasons for EMEA orgs exceeding budget included: storage usage was higher than anticipated (39%); data operations fees were higher than forecast (37%); additional applications were migrated to the cloud (37%); storage list prices increased (37%); higher data retrieval (35%); API calls (31%); egress fees (26%) and more data deletion (26%) fees than expected.

Overall, EMEA respondents indicate that 48% of their cloud storage bill is allocated to fees, and 51% allocated to storage capacity, on average. Netherlands indicated the highest proportional spend on fees at 51%, UK indicated the lowest at 45%.

“Today’s enterprises are required to be agile, and the insights gained from data lend a competitive advantage,” said Smith. “However, while the perceived value of enterprise data might be limitless, storing and accessing that data, on the other hand, has a very real cost.  Unfortunately, the complexity and uncertainty of cloud storage fees can be a major challenge, and a key reason why more than half of organisations exceeded their cloud storage budget in 2022. This highlights a significant pain point for enterprises, and an opportunity to improve as they assess cloud storage spending for 2023.”