Slow growth expected for cloud computing storage market as security and performance issues remain

There has been a lot of conversation and debate about Google's entry into the cloud storage market and how its new Drive service will compete with the likes of DropBox, SkyDrive, and iCloud.

However, a deeper discussion exists on whether the increased numbers of cloud storage offerings available to businesses signals problems ahead for traditional on-premise storage vendors, like EMC, IBM and Oracle.

The storage-as-a-service market is still underdeveloped when compared to the software-as-a-service market, but this is unlikely to be the case for long, when there is so much industry focus and investment on taking storage services to the cloud.

The cloud offers businesses an almost-infinite amount of space to store data and the ability to expand storage capacity on demand is an attractive proposition.

Analysts continue to argue that security constraints tend to hold back larger enterprises from adopting online storage solutions, but according to Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle, this will change in the coming years.

"Online storage solutions removes data from IT control, and it is still a solution used predominantly by SMEs," he told V3.

"But there are a number of cloud storage firms that are specifically targeted at the enterprise, and they can often pass security audits better than IT organisations do."

Enderle listed a number of cloud storage firms that meet enterprises requirements when it comes to security, such as Ignite.

Another is Intronis which has offered businesses cloud storage services since 2003, and offers 256-bit AES security and multiple datacentres in different US regions to protect data.