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While two thirds of organisations polled by cloud storage and data protection provider CTERA Networks deploys more than a quarter of its applications in the cloud, protecting them is a different story altogether.

The findings appear in a report entitled ‘Game of Clouds’ – no prizes for guessing the theme – which makes the research concept clear.

“The emergence and tremendous growth of cloud computing in the enterprise is taking IT environments to uncharted territory, where unprecedented efficiency and cost benefits battle with new challenges around privacy, security, and the data protection and availability of critical business data,” the report opens. “Like most IT evolutions, there will be winners and losers. The key to victory in this ‘Game of Clouds’ lies in the alignment of an organisation’s data protection strategies with its business goals.”

The report found that while more than a quarter of apps are in the cloud at two thirds of firms, and while 37% of the 400 IT decision makers polled plan to grow their cloud use by at least 25% if not more, two thirds (66%) either ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ agree that there is less focus on backing up applications in the cloud.

The reason? CTERA argues there is a ‘misconception that the cloud is inherently resilient compared to on-premises applications’. Furthermore, 62% say they rely on the cloud provider to back up applications running on their platform. “It is clear these organisations have faith in the perceived inherent resilience of their cloud providers, but they should be wary of relying on a third party to serve as both a platform to run applications and to maintain the only backups of those applications,” the report notes.

More than half (54%) of respondents say they are embracing a hybrid cloud strategy, while more than a third (36%) admit loss of data in the cloud would be more catastrophic than their data centre crashing. The message is clear, CTERA argues. “The enterprise’s move beyond traditional data centres has rewritten the playbook for data protection in the cloud,” said Jeff Denworth, CTERA SVP marketing in a statement.

“As organisations adopt cloud and multi-cloud strategies, traditional backup tools fall down. Our research spotlights the key data protection considerations and challenges for enterprises as they look for simple, efficient, and automated solutions that protect critical cloud-based applications.”

You can find out more about the report here (registration required).