Enterprises are going over their allocated cloud budgets by an average of 31% in Singapore and 43% globally, with unplanned data backup and recovery as the leading cause, according to Veritas Technologies.
Research commissioned by Veritas Technologies 96% of respondents in Singapore (94% globally) reported that their organisation has incurred higher costs than originally anticipated when using a public cloud service provider (CSP).
For the 2022 Research Report on Securing Your Enterprise in a Multi-Cloud Environment, Vanson Bourne surveyed 1,500 technology and IT decision-makers across 12 countries in August and September 2022, including Singapore.
Results show that enterprises clearly see value in the public cloud, as all respondents (globally and in Singapore) agreed that using CSPs and their tools provided benefits to the organisation, such as flexibility, scalability and mobility.
However, organisations are planning their cloud budgets without fully understanding what they are ultimately going to need to pay for. For example, nearly all (99% globally and in Singapore) respondents believed that the CSP would be responsible for protecting some of their assets in the cloud.
This is rarely the case as most CSPs make it very clear that, while they are on the line to ensure the resiliency “of” the cloud, their customers shoulder the responsibility for the data and applications “in” the cloud.
In Singapore, 84% of respondents (89% globally) said that their organisations had experienced a ransomware attack on their cloud environments.
The misunderstanding around the cloud responsibility model means that many companies have not factored in the requirement for third-party data protection and are leaving their critical data vulnerable to these ransomware attacks – and other data-loss incidents.
Close to half (46%) of organisations in Singapore (53% globally) have lost data as a result of relying solely on the backup tools built into solutions by their CSPs.
Also, 75% of respondents in Singapore (76% globally) agreed that current offerings from CSPs fall short of their organisation’s security needs.
The research showed that unforeseen data protection needs were the most common source of unexpected cloud costs, with 33% of organisations in Singapore (40% globally) citing backup and recovery as the leading area of overspend.
“Cloud is bringing huge benefits to organisations – but our research also put the spotlight on the need to better understand what purchasers are actually buying from CSPs, especially when it comes to data protection in the cloud,” said Andy Ng, VP and managing director for Asia South and Pacific Region at Veritas.
Ng said failing to do so could be detrimental, as by the time that IT leaders realise that there’s something that they’ve overlooked, it’s common that they’ve already lost data.
“Therefore, if they want to avoid asking for additional budget to cover a project overspend, it’s critical to factor in data protection and take back control, right from the start, to protect against any vulnerabilities,” said Ng.
