State of Data Center Offerings Survey Results


During January 2020, US Signal conducted a study on today's states of data center offerings, which surveyed 110 U.S.-based IT decision-makers. Below is a summary of the findings.

Q: Have you been impacted by a ransomware attack in the last 12 months?

Just under 2 in 5 respondents (38%) have been impacted by a ransomware attack in the last twelve months

Graphic 1

Q: How confident or unconfident are you in your disaster recovery and backup solution?

In the event of an incident, such as an outage, natural disaster or ransomware attack, majority of respondents felt very or somewhat confident in their solutions.

Graphic 2

Q: Do you feel you have sufficiently skilled
IT staff and resources to handle your
daily data center operations?

Interestingly, despite common knowledge of the IT skills gap in 2020, the majority of respondents (86 percent) felt that they have sufficient resources to handle their daily data center operations.

Graphic 4
Graphic 3

Q: How likely or unlikely are you to select a data center provider that is close to your users?

A substantial 91 percent of respondents were likely to select a data center provider that was located close to their users. This was supported by the next question showing 46 percent of respondents stating that they prioritize network capacity and connectivity options when choosing a provider, with 15 percent naming it their number one priority.

Q: Pick up to three top considerations when choosing a third-party edge data center provider. Of those three, which one consideration is most important?

The most selected answers for the respondents top three considerations included cost, disaster recovery and backup availability, network capacity and connectivity options, and security and compliance standards. 

The most selected answer in both the top three considerations and one most important consideration was security and compliance standards.

Graphic 5

Q: Which of the following services do you currently utilize from a third-party edge data center provider? (Pick all that apply)

Overall, the top services respondents are using can be ranked as follows: 

  • Backup and disaster recovery (75 percent)
  • Security services (73 percent)
  • Network connectivity (69 percent)
  • Private cloud hosting (59 percent)
  • Multi-tenant cloud hosting (56 percent)
  • Colocation (39 percent)


Graphic 6

Q: When did you begin utilizing the services offered from your third-party edge data center provider?

The study showed that 34 percent started utilizing the services offered from their third-party edge data center provider within the last six months, and 11 percent of the total respondents initiated these services within the last two weeks, indicating rapid adoption. 

Graphic 7

Q: Which of the following best describes your current infrastructure deployment?

66 percent of respondents described their current infrastructure deployment as a hybrid IT architecture. Of the remaining, 20 percent stated that their infrastructure was entirely cloud-based, and 14 percent said it was all on premise.

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Take it "To-Go"

Download these printable versions of the infographic and survey results for future reference.

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