Healthcare IT Professionals and Executives Believe Data is Safer in the Cloud than On-Premises

WAYNE, Pa., March 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Healthcare IT professionals and executives believe overwhelmingly that when facing hardware malfunctions and environmental disasters, their organization's data is safer in the cloud than on premises according to a technology survey released today by Evolve IP. The survey also revealed a preference for private over public clouds with about 60 percent preferring private cloud infrastructure over public clouds for data security. The survey of more than 180 healthcare professionals, which provides current cloud adoption trends and future cloud deployment insights, also revealed that 85 percent of all healthcare organizations now have at least one service in the cloud.

Data security is an ongoing concern for IT and this year's survey asked respondents where they felt their data was safest under three common risk scenarios: environmental disasters, malicious attacks (e.g. cyberattacks) and hardware failure.

• For environmental disasters - 61 percent felt their information was safest in a private cloud compared to 27.5 percent in a public cloud and 11.5 percent on premise.
• For malicious attacks, 58.5 percent preferred a private cloud to safeguard their data versus 32 percent on premise and 9.5 percent public cloud.
• For hardware malfunctions 58.5 percent preferred private clouds compared to 24 percent public cloud and 17.5 percent on premises.

Other key results of the survey showed that, on average, healthcare organizations have between 2 and three services (2.75 average) in the cloud. Data backup, servers/data centers, other SaaS and Microsoft Exchange and Office were cited as the top deployed cloud services. Additionally, the survey indicated that adoption will continue to be strong, with 81 percent of respondents planning on adding new or additional cloud services in the next three years.

The survey results also found that 38.75 percent of organizations had deployed a cloud solution on their own versus using a third party provider. This is markedly lower than the average of all industries of 54.75 percent. When asked if they had to start the deployment over, nearly a third (32.5 percent) said they would outsource to a solution provider the next time.

"As evidenced by their currently deployed services and planned adoption trends, healthcare organizations have recognized the significant benefits of the cloud," said Dave McCrystal, Healthcare Vertical Marketing Manager of Evolve IP. "With a dedicated healthcare focus, geographically redundant Tier IV data centers and The Evolve IP Compliance Cloud^TM, Evolve IP is incredibly well positioned to help these organizations successfully deploy HIPAA and PCI-compliant cloud computing and cloud communications services."

Additional Findings:

• 42 percent of survey respondents noted that network access was a pain point for their organization yet just 22 percent had evaluated SD-WAN technology as a solution.
• The overwhelming majority of respondents indicated HIPAA compliance requirements (85 percent). In addition, 32 percent also faced PCI compliance requirements.
• The top services survey respondents expect to deploy in the cloud over the next three years include data backup (48 percent), Exchange / Office (27.5 percent) and phone systems (27 percent).

Survey Methodology

The blind, web-based survey was conducted by Evolve IP during January of 2017, featuring over 1,300 respondents in multiple industries across North America. Over 170 of the respondents indicated they were in the healthcare industry. Of the healthcare respondents, 76 percent came from organizations with between 50 and 5,000 employees, 15 percent from companies with more than 5,000, 6 percent were businesses with 11-49 associates and 3 percent were small businesses with 10 employees or less. Evolve IP customers were excluded from the survey.

ABOUT EVOLVE IP

Evolve IP is The Cloud Services Company™. Designed from the beginning to provide organizations with a unified option for cloud services, Evolve IP enables decision-makers to migrate all or select IT technologies to its award-winning cloud platform. Evolve IP's combination of security, stability, scalability, and lower total cost of ownership is fundamentally superior to outdated legacy systems and other cloud offerings. Today the company's services, including virtual servers, virtual desktops, disaster recovery, IP phone systems / unified communications, contact centers and more, are deployed by more than 1,300 commercial business accounts with a combined 130,000+ users, licensed seats and managed end points.  Visit www.EvolveIP.net for more information.

PRLog ID: www.prlog.org/12621533

SOURCE Evolve IP

Related Links

http://www.evolveip.net