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Percent of Corporate Data Stored in the Cloud (2023)

by Fabio Duarte
March 22, 2023

The popularity of cloud computing in business continues to grow.

And each year, more and more corporate data is being stored in the cloud.

We’ll explore the percentage of corporate data stored in the cloud and other related statistics below.

Contents

Top 4 Corporate Data Storage Statistics

  • Around 60% of corporate data is stored in the cloud
  • The amount of corporate data stored in the cloud has at least doubled since 2015
  • Over 50% of companies store business records in the public cloud
  • 89% of companies use a multi-cloud approach

How Much Corporate Data is Stored in the Cloud?

According to the latest available data, approximately 60% of corporate data is stored in the cloud.

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This figure has increased 2x from just 30% in 2015.

Here’s how the percentage of corporate data stored in the cloud has changed in recent years:

Year

Proportion of Corporate Data Stored in the Cloud

2015

30%

2016

35%

2017

43%

2019*

48%

2020

50%

2021

50%

2022

60%

Source: Thales Group

Cloud Computing Industry Growth

The global cloud computing market is worth an estimated $545.8 billion.

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Over the next few years, the industry is expected to more than double, growing at a CAGR of 17.9% between 2022 and 2027.

By 2027, the cloud computing industry is projected to reach a valuation of $1.24 trillion.

Source: MarketsandMarkets

Type of Corporate Data Stored in the Cloud

Employee data (44%) and customer data (44%) are the most common data categories stored by companies in the cloud.

However, each category has seen a drop from 50% in 2019.

Patient or protected health information is increasingly being stored in the cloud by companies. Since 2019, the proportion of companies storing this sort of data in the cloud has grown from 10% to 14%.

Here’s the data in full:

Type of Sensitive Data

2019

2020

2022

Change Since 2019

Employee data

50%

42%

44%

↓ 6%

Customer data

50%

44%

44%

↓ 6%

Corporate financial information

26%

26%

35%

↑ 9%

Intellectual property or trade secrets

16%

14%

23%

↑ 7%

Patient or protected health information

10%

12%

14%

↑ 4%

More specifically, most companies (54.4%) keep business records including finance and accounting stored in the public cloud. 

Employee records (48.9%) and business intelligence (45.6%) round off the top three.

Here are the latest figures for sensitive data stored in the public cloud:

Type of Sensitive Data

Proportion of Companies Storing Data in the Cloud

Business records (finance and accounting)

54.4%

Employee records

48.9%

Business intelligence

45.6%

Customer personal information

35.9%

Customer financial information

32.5%

Intellectual property

29.5%

Health records

23.2%

Customer payment card information

22.4%

National security or law enforcement information

9.7%

Student records

8.9%

Other

5.1%

Sources: Netwrix, SANS Institute

Cloud Use in Business

As many as 89% of companies use a multi-cloud approach. While 80% take a hybrid approach, utilizing public and private clouds. 

Yet, 97% of IT leaders still intend to expand their cloud systems further.

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As of 2022, the majority (61%) of businesses use either one (34%) or two (27%) clouds in their organization.

These figures have shifted in favor of using one cloud over two. In 2019 62% of businesses used either one (30%) or two (32%).

The number of organizations using three clouds has almost halved from 20% in 2019 to 11% in 2022. While the number of companies using four clouds has dipped from 7% to 3%.

Here’s the data on the number of clouds used by organizations over time:

Year

0 clouds

1 cloud

2 clouds

3 clouds

4 clouds

5+ clouds

2019

9%

30%

32%

20%

7%

2%

2020

7%

33%

30%

20%

6%

3%

2021

4%

35%

30%

22%

6%

2%

2022

6%

34%

27%

11%

3%

2%

Sources: Flexera, Confluera, Turbonomic

Major Players in Cloud Computing

In the previous 12 months leading up to September 2022, cloud infrastructure service revenue totaled $217 billion.

Amazon Web Services is the leading cloud infrastructure service provider with a market share of 34%.

Combined, AWS (34%), Microsoft Azure (21%), and Google Cloud (11%) make up around two-thirds (66%) of the cloud market space.

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Here’s a breakdown of the major players in the cloud computing market:

Cloud Infrastructure Service Provider

Market Share

Approximate Revenue

Amazon Web Services

34%

$73.78 billion

Microsoft Azure

21%

$45.57 billion

Google Cloud

11%

$23.87 billion

Alibaba Cloud

5%

$10.85 billion

IBM Cloud

3%

$6.51 billion

Salesforce

3%

$6.51 billion

Tencent Cloud

2%

$4.34 billion

Oracle

2%

$4.34 billion

Source: Statista

Cost of Cloud Computing

Each of the three major cloud providers offer a variety of payment options depending on the service. Long-term, infrequently accessed archive data is considerably cheaper than standard cloud services.

Amazon Web Services

Prices range from $0.00099 per GB for S3 Glacier Deep Archive to $0.125/GB-month for Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2).

Microsoft Azure

Prices range from $0.00099 per GB for Azure Blob Archive Storage to $0.16 per provisioned GiB for Premium Azure Files. 

Google Cloud

Prices range from $0.0012 per GB, per month for Google Cloud Archive Storage to $19.84432/vCPU month for On-Demand Predefined vCPUs.

Source: TechTarget, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud

Conclusion

Cloud infrastructure is now vital to many organizations.

And data storage in the cloud is only likely to increase in the near future.

For more stats on this topic, take a look at 7 Cloud Computing Trends and 20 Skyrocketing Data Storage Startups.