Despite Microsoft's allowing clients to host Office 365 applications and workload data on the cloud , a majority of organizations still host Office 365 on-premise, according to a recent report by IT solutions and managed services provider Softchoice. Driven in large part by IT resource limitations and apprehension with cloud storage , the prevalence of these on-premise deployments may expose companies to increased cybersecurity risk.

The Softchoice report, which looked at over 12 million Office 365 applications in 880 organizations, found that only 38 percent of all deployments were hosted on the cloud. Among Microsoft Office 365 applications, over half of Exchange Online and Office ProPlus deployments were run on the cloud, while under a quarter of Skype or SharePoint deployments were as well.

Chris Woodin, senior director at Microsoft and software asset management at Softchoice, noted that the trend to host Office 365 on-site, which is especially prominent among “those in the legal vertical,” is driven largely by cost considerations.