Cloud and data center customers are suffering from ‘overwhelming cloud failure rates and multiple unexpected challenges’ according to a new report, which blames the conflict between competing vendors for the damage.

In Casualties of Cloud Wars: Customers Are Paying the Price, a study commissioned by cloud infrastructure provider iland, more than 400 professionals gave negative feedback about the effects of many IT vendors marketing strategy.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers came in for stark criticism from the survey group, which was spread across the US, Europe and Asia Pacific.

The study, conducted by independent researcher Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) unearthed a number of adoption trends and unreported challenges faced by potential enterprise cloud clients.

Around nine in ten (88%) of the survey group said they had experienced at least one challenge that their cloud vendor had not warned them about.

At the top of the list of unexpected problems were funding crises caused by over complex pricing models and hidden fees.

According to the report the pricing models and hiden fees, have neutralized any cost-saving arguments that could be advanced by the data center and cloud industry.

Many also expressed dismay over performance issues.

“Cloud successes and failures underscore the need for superior support and platform functionality,” said the report.

The report also touched on trust issues, as most customers refused to rely on one cloud provider.

On average each respondent said they use three cloud vendors, indicating a continuing struggle to find the right cloud solution.

Risk mitigation policies, said the report, is forcing buyers to create a diversity of providers.

With no pressing need to standardize on a single vendor, many enterprises descend into department-level fragmentation said the report.

Public cloud customers of Rackspace reported the highest failure rates (63%), followed by Amazon Web Services (57%) and Microsoft Azure (44%).

VMware’s vCloud-based service providers enjoyed the best feedback (67% gave a positive rating) and lowest rates of stalled or unsuccessful adoptions (33%).

EMA’s VP Dennis Drogseth said a 33% failure rate could still be unacceptably high.

“Stories about successful cloud implementations are captivating, but the reality is that cloud is more complex than many news headlines make it out to be,” Drogseth said.

Cloud buyers must be more self-aware, he warned.

“Unless they have an experienced staff that can manipulate the mass-market systems of the big providers, they should seek cloud vendors that take a different, personalized approach,” Drogseth said.