After a technology is introduced, its benefits are widely touted by vendors and early adopters. Then reality sets in, or what Gartner describes as the "trough of disillusionment."

Public cloud storage: Not having to buy servers to store your data is one of the chief benefits cloud proponents have advocated. Instead of buying expensive equipment to store all your data on your own site, it can be sent up to the cloud where your provider will hold it and it can be accessed from anywhere, or so goes the Cinderella story of cloud storage.

But in the last year, the realities of the technology have begun to set in, Gartner says. High-profile service outages from some of the biggest names in the cloud industry, including Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com, have soured some users' appetites for storing mission-critical information in the cloud. Gartner says there are unpredictable usage costs, which turn others off to the technology. The firm recommends exploring public cloud storage options for non-mission critical applications, such as file sharing, archiving and backup. "Gartner does not expect full-scale adoption to occur until cost, legal, and infrastructure integration issues are sufficiently addressed to reduce the risk of entry by large enterprises," the report states.