FRAMINGHAM, 5 APRIL 2011 - Fifty-seven percent of CIOs and storage administrators plan to adopt cloud storage -- first for email, then front office applications and finally for backup data -- according to a survey released this week.

The survey, performed by market research firm Storage Strategies NOW (SSG-NOW) and co-sponsored by the Storage Networking Industry Association, was sent out to more than 2,000 end users who had attended Storage Networking World (SNW) trade show in the past. The results were released on Monday at the show here in Santa Clara, Calif.

Of 133 respondents to the survey, most indicated that the adoption of standards will be more key to companies using public cloud services, but not as important to deploying private clouds within their own data centers.

"The security of data stored in the cloud isn't as much of a concern as lack of budget is," said Deni Connor, principal analyst for SSG-NOW.

Asked when they would adopt cloud storage, 27% indicated six months to one year, 22% said they'd already adopted some form of cloud storage, 17% said one year to 18 months, 16% indicated they'd adopt it in the next six months, and 12% said 18 months to two years.

Respondent's answers varied widely when asked what their primary reason was for storing data in the cloud. An even number of respondents (12% and 12%) indicated they wanted to use the cloud as an offsite location for data, and they didn't want to have to build out their own storage infrastructure.

Sixteen percent said they hoped the cloud could reduce their capital and operational expenditures, and 14% hoped it would reduce their total cost of ownership, while another 14% hoped it would increase their business agility.

Asked what the single biggest misconception about the cloud is, 24% of respondents said the cloud model is not proven. Another 33% were split into even 11% thirds, saying the cloud was not reliable, it created vendor lock-in or was difficult to integrate. The remaining respondents said the cloud lacks adequate security (13%); there are no misperceptions (12%); cloud vendors are not yet viable (10%), and the cloud is hard to customize (9%).

Intel's cloud delivers services in minutes

Ajay Chandramouly, director of IT for Intel, said his IT shop began deploying a private/public cloud storage

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