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In recent years, cloud storage vendors have been popping up to address the growing demand for cloud storage solutions, a market that is expected to reach $74.94 billion by 2021, up from $23.76 billion in 2016.

One of those vendors is Zadara Storage, a six-year-old company based in Irvine, Calif., that offers enterprise Storage-as-a-Service, and has partnerships with cloud service providers including AWS, Microsoft, and Google. Its Partner Network includes cloud resellers, integrators and VARs.

A report released this week, commissioned by Zadara, asked IT decision-makers from the U.S., U.K. and Germany to weigh in on their cloud storage strategies. It found that above all else, decision-makers are looking for cloud storage that offers scalability to fit their organizations needs.

As future requirements are unknown, buyers will be attracted to vendors that impose the fewest limitations on scalability, with the lowest entry price point and the highest levels of security and availability, according to a paper by IDC analysts Silvia Cosso and Nick Sundby.

Heres a look at 3 of the cloud storage priorities of IT decision-makers in 2017:

One-third of IT decision-makers (33 percent) said they plan to deploy cloud storage that scales up and down according to their organizations needs. The ability to scale is essential for workloads such as ecommerce, online marketing, mobile applications, and high-performance computing, according to IDC.

[E]nterprises need flexible storage that can stretch and reduce almost in real time, without having to plan ahead, and without the risk of buying unneeded capacity, IDC said in a data sheet about Zadara Storage.

As Talkin Cloud has noted before, service level agreements (SLAs) for cloud storage are important because they set clear expectations for cloud storage customers. According to Zadara, 17 percent of decision-makers it surveyed want to obtain stronger SLAs for their cloud storage vendors this year.

Thirteen-percent of survey respondents are looking at deploying new storage hardware in 2017.

According to IDC, 26 percent of Zadara storage customers opted for its on-premises option, which uses dedicated Zadara hardware, in 2015. In 2016, Zadara's On Premise as a Service(OPaaS) offering grew to 40 percent of overall recurring revenue.

IDC remarked in 2015 that this segment wasgrowing faster than Zadaras cloud business, and proving especially popular in Western Europe, where data sovereignty is of paramount importance.

Hardware spend coupled with public cloud storage will enable organizations to establish a hybrid approach which can ease compliance and regulatory concerns.

Talkin' Cloud Wants to Know...

In conversations with your own customers, what are their cloud storage priorities for 2017? How are you evolving your service offerings to meet those needs? Let us know in the comments.

This article has been updated to include figures for Zadara's OPaaS offering in 2016.

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Top 3 Cloud Storage Priorities in 2017 - Talkin' Cloud