Ensono: Security is a key factor when choosing a public cloud provider

There are many factors to considered when selecting a public cloud provider, but 56% in a recent survey said security concerns had the most significant influence during the selection process for public cloud providers, IT services management company Ensono said.

Last year’s events caused an immediate shift in business workflow forcing most companies to speed up their digital transformation. In December 2020, Ensono surveyed 500 full-time professionals with cloud procurement decision-making power in a variety of industries across the United States and United Kingdom to understand their cloud perspectives The Cloud Clarity Report uncovered multi-cloud usage is emerging as the dominant cloud strategy and Microsoft Azure is the most-used public cloud vendor among our respondents. Most surprisingly, private cloud remains a permanent and long-term strategic component for a significant number of businesses.

The survey also found that users of multi-cloud environments, many of those who are still maintaining on-premise workloads, are saddled with aging technology. 1 in 10 of respondents (9%) use unspecified legacy technology in their IT infrastructure, and one-third (33%) still have a mainframe environment present in their IT stack. The majority of respondents are in some combination of public and private cloud for business, and only 9% of users are solely operating in the public cloud. Additionally, a relatively small percentage operate only in the private cloud.

Security and compliance are the top drivers of cloud decision-making, and 56% said security considerations had a “significant impact” on the final decision when evaluating a public cloud provider. When ranking factors in terms of importance in the decision-making process, security and technical requirements outrank price and support. The fact that respondents are willing to pay a premium for technical features showcases how important these features are.

It’s clear from the data that today’s decision-makers are going all-in on the cloud but have different factors driving their strategies. The technical and security components of private and hybrid cloud environments cannot be discounted, even as some respondents are choosing a single public cloud provider.

Read Ensono’s full Cloud Clarity Report.