Vanson Bourne conducted the survey on behalf of NCC Group and questioned CIOs from organisations with over 1,000 employees in a range of sectors.
With 30% of respondents currently using cloud applications for finance functions – which in many cases are business critical – an extended outage could have severe implications.
Daniel Liptrott, managing director of NCC Group’s escrow division said: “Many organisations are now putting business critical applications and data in the cloud. Whilst cloud can bring great benefits to an organisation, if it takes weeks or months to recover from provider failure, that can cause serious problems. Having to wait that sort of time just isn’t feasible.”
The research also found that more than 50% of businesses using cloud had no contingency plan in place for provider failure. With the recent high profile collapses of hosting provider Code Spaces and IT supplier 2e2, contingency planning has become more pertinent during end-user discussions with prospective cloud providers.
Liptrott continued: “Service quality will always be what attracts a customer in the first instance, but assurance over a supplier’s viability can make or break a deal. Prospective cloud customers need to know that if the worst happens there’s a way of them accessing their application and data, without having to wait three weeks, or longer, to get it. Suppliers must be more proactive in this area, working with their end users to put a solution in place.”