M+E Daily

Ninety percent of enterprises globally plan to increase their cloud storage budgets this year, according to the 2024 Wasabi Global Cloud Storage Index, released Feb. 28.

That rate of capacity increase was 9 points higher than the last  survey (which indicated 84% expected an increase).

The reasons why enterprises are so bullish on increasing their cloud storage budgets this year are due, in part, to new data security, backup and recovery requirements, with 95% of C-level respondents saying they expect cloud storage budgets to increase in 2024.

The Index was commissioned by  Wasabi Technologies and conducted by Vanson Bourne. The Index “uncovers the changing attitudes toward public cloud storage adoption, the factors that influence storage buying decisions, and the market’s top priorities when it comes to budget, capacity, vendor selection, billing, features and satisfaction,” the company said.

The Index also predicts higher cloud storage growth to support IT infrastructure and business modernization, Wasabi said.

Meanwhile, 53% of respondents said they were exceeding their cloud storage budgets, partially due to them  using more capacity than they planned (42%) and are migrating more apps and data to the cloud than planned (45%), according to Wasabi.

Artificial intelligence/machine learning applications and services are adopted or will be adopted by almost all organizations (99%), with a specific focus on accelerating product innovation and operational efficiencies, Wasabi said.

“I was definitely surprised by the jump in the number of organizations planning to increase their cloud storage budgets this year (90%) and the amount planning to increase the amount of data they store in the cloud (93%), according to Andrew Smith, senior manager, strategy and market intelligence at Wasabi.

“In any survey with a sample over 1,000 respondents [it] is pretty impressive,” he told MESA on March 4. “But also, we asked both questions last year, and both were in the 84 percent range, so an increase of 6 to 9 points year-over-year, off an already high base, is pretty impressive.”

As cloud storage budgets increase as more enterprises move to the cloud, the market “still suffers from expensive public cloud storage fees,” Wasabi said.

More than half of respondents said they exceeded their budgeted spend on public cloud storage. The main reasons cited for budget excess include using more storage than they planned (42%) and migrating more apps and data to the cloud than planned (45%), according to Wasabi.

Other findings included: On average, 47% of cloud storage billing is allocated to data and usage fees, including including application programming interfaces (API) calls, operations, egress, retrieval, etc.

Meanwhile, 72% of new cloud storage adopters, those who acquired services in 2022 and 2023, exceeded budget spend, according to Wasabi. Respondents cited high storage usage and growth, unanticipated egress fees and API call fees, as the three main reasons they exceeded their budgets, Wasabi said.

To read the 2024 Wasabi Global Cloud Storage Index in its entirety, click here.