Study: 90 percent of companies will be using the cloud in the next five years

Over the last few days, winter storms caused many employees to stay in and work from home. Of course, this was only permissible in businesses that have a system in place for employees to be effective when operating outside of the office. One of the main ways companies are doing this is through the use of cloud technology.

According to a recent survey by Avere Systems, 90 percent of respondents currently use or are planning to use the cloud platform for computing, storage or application purposes within the next two to five years. On top of that, 60 percent of those surveyed view the main benefit of cloud storage to be the cost savings when it comes to disaster recovery and business continuity.

However, there are still a number of challenges that businesses face when it comes to adopting the cloud successfully. Some of these are born out of mistruths. Rebecca Thompson, the vice president of marketing at Avere Systems, said that solutions providers will be at the head of changing opinions.

"There are still people and process challenges that impede cloud adoption, as legacy storage vendors – with no suitable solutions – have driven fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of customers," Thompson said. "It's incumbent upon emerging market leaders to educate end-users on the myths and fallacies of cloud use and streamline the transition so companies are able to fully see the capital and operational benefits of this new shift in storage and compute."

By partnering with an IT consulting firm that specializes in the cloud platform, any company can more easily deploy a cloud based solution.