OK, OK… so we all keep hearing about how great the cloud is and how cloud storage providers offer a plethora of benefits such as increased efficiencies, cost savings and improved disaster recovery. But just how fast are trends like cloud storage catching on?

Very fast, especially if you live in India.

A recent survey released by IDC, sponsored by Hitachi (News - Alert) Data Systems, reveals that the Indian market is leading the cloud storage adoption race and is the most mature in terms of adoption of cloud technologies. The survey was conducted by IDC (News - Alert) from August to September 2011 with 150 IT executives from large enterprises in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore.

According the survey, 50 percent of respondents in India are using or are planning to use cloud storage in the next six to 12 months. Moreover, 30 percent of respondents in India are using converged systems and 35 percent are either evaluating or planning to use such systems.

As evidenced by the survey, the Indian market is well on its way to embracing a more advanced data center architecture and, as a result, growing pains are felt. Specifically, data center managers are contending with virtualization challenges and email growth and backup concerns.

Other points of the survey showed that having access to accurate data on a timely basis is paramount in achieving deeper business insight. For example, about 70 percent of respondents stated that the demand of the business for deeper analysis outpaces the ability for their systems to ensure the data they had is relevant, timely and useful. Their data growth is outpacing their ability to effectively manage it.

Moreover, 70 percent of respondents indicated that they are experiencing problems from virtual server sprawl, as they are unable to keep a close track of the virtual platform assets and their alignment to storage.

The survey also demonstrated that it is difficult to justify cloud storage investments for many as budgets still remain tight. Sixty percent cited aligning IT costs to business budgets and growth as a main challenge to adopting their IT strategy amid current market conditions.

In addition, respondents indicated that backup window a key issue as 60 percent of Indian organizations said they not have enough time to back up systems.

“Data needs to be shared, compared, analyzed and visualized more holistically. Only then can data become information used for insight, trending, and leveraged proactively in anticipation of things to come,” Kevin Eggleston, senior vice president and general manager, Hitachi Data Systems (News - Alert) Asia Pacific, said in a statement. “There is a great potential for the information cloud because it will analyze content independently of applications or media and enable analytics of ‘Big Data’ to better align itself to human behavior for deeper, more relevant insight, driving innovation, advancing research, enabling better collaboration, and building more sustainable societies.”