Cloud server provider ElasticHosts has released results of its Chief Information Officer (CIO) study – in which it interviewed 200 CIOs – and according to the results businesses are only using 51% of their cloud server capacity over a 24/7 cycle.

ElasticHosts’ research shows that of those surveyed, most are over-provisioning and over-paying for cloud servers and still failing to get the performance they need.

Many respondents see over-provisioning as a ‘necessary evil’ to handle spikes in traffic and protect performance.

88% admitted they often sacrifice peak performance to cut costs as their companies are unwilling to pay for the extra capacity.

ElasticHosts CEO Richard Davies said there were to be times when no one was using a server yet, businesses were still paying for something they aren’t using.

ElasticHosts said traditional VM servers do allow users to scale their servers up and down according to need and companies can create APIs that automate the process. Of the 200 CIOs interviewed 14% said they fully automate this process.

This means 86% of businesses are still managing server capacity levels manually which ElasticHosts claims to explain why there is capacity wastage.

Despite the results nearly half (49%) said they believed that the cloud has delivered on the promise of being a fully elastic and flexible solution.

“I’m not surprised that half of customers believe that cloud is delivering on its promise, as up until recently it was – well, as far as it could,” Davies said.

“If you can fully automate your servers, which 14% are already doing according to our survey, you can avoid paying out the extra costs for over-provisioning capacity”.