Organisations are moving to the cloud without evaluating the impact of a cloud outage, according to the latest study from data management provider Veritas.

The report, titled The Truth in Cloud and put together alongside Vanson Bourne, found that an ‘alarming majority’ of firms shift full responsibility for data protection, compliance and uptime on cloud service providers.

Three in five (59%) of the 1,200 global business and IT decision makers polled said dealing with cloud service interruptions was the primary responsibility of the cloud service provider, while 83% added their provider was responsible for ensuring workloads and data in the cloud are protected against outages.

It feels as though the point has been reached where every respondent will respond affirmatively when asked about their cloud initiatives – and this study saw it almost take effect, with 99% of IT decision makers saying their organisations will move systems to the cloud in the next 12 to 24 months. More than a quarter (27%) added they also expect to outsource all on-premises infrastructure to the public cloud.

With more organisations taking increasingly advanced cloud initiatives, the benefits of embracing multi-cloud can be outweighed by the issues of downtime and who is responsible for it, Veritas adds.

“Organisations are clearly lacking in understanding the anatomy of a cloud outage and that recovery is a joint responsibility between the cloud service provider and the business,” said Mike Palmer, Veritas executive vice president and chief product officer. “Immediate recovery from a cloud outage is absolutely within an organisation’s control and responsibility to perform if they take a proactive stance to application uptime in the cloud.

“Getting this right means less downtime, financial impact, loss of customers’ trust, and damage to brand reputation,” Palmer added.

You can read the full report here (email required).

Read more: It’s not you, it’s me: Understanding the shared responsibility of cloud security