Hybrid cloud is set to take off, with most companies citing it as the ideal IT model.
This is one of the findings from Nutanix’s first annual global Enterprise Cloud Index, which measures enterprise plans for adopting private, hybrid and public clouds.
The new report found enterprises plan to increase hybrid cloud usage, with 91% stating hybrid cloud as the ideal IT model, but only 18% stating they have that model today.
In South Africa, the results compared strongly with the rest of the world, with a total of 93% of the local respondents agreeing that hybrid cloud is the ideal future IT model, yet only 15% responding that they have this model in play today.
The findings also revealed that application mobility across any cloud is a top priority for 97% of respondents – with 88% of respondents saying it would “solve a lot of my problems”. South African companies mirror these results.
Additionally, the report found public cloud is not a panacea; IT decision makers ranked matching applications to the right cloud environment as a critical capability, and 35% of organisations using public clouds overspent their annual budget.
In South Africa this figure was 41% – a fair bit higher that its global counterparts – highlighting the fact that cloud cost management remains a problem locally.
When asked to rank the primary benefits of hybrid cloud, interoperability between cloud types (23%) and the ability to move applications back and forth between clouds (16%) outranked cost (6%) and security (5%) as the primary benefits.
On the local front, figures were mixed. When ranking the primary benefits of hybrid cloud and in the case of the need for interoperability between cloud types the figure was 12% citing this as a benefit; whereas they rated the ability to move applications back and forth between clouds at 21% – this outranked cost amongst South Africans who weighted this as 10% and security as 5% – the same as the global figure.
In roles centered on agility and digital transformation, IT teams understand that runtime environments for enterprise apps change constantly. Respondents indicated a need for greater orchestration and application mobility across cloud environments, as they seek flexibility to move apps to the “right” cloud on a more dynamic basis.
In addition, shadow IT practices that circumvent enterprise IT teams are posing a significant challenge to forecasting and controlling public cloud spend with well over half of respondents (57%) reporting one or more incidents of shadow IT.
“As enterprises demand stronger application mobility and interoperability, they are increasingly choosing hybrid cloud infrastructure,” says Ben Gibson, chief marketing officer for Nutanix. “While the advent of public cloud has increased IT efficiency in certain areas, hybrid cloud capabilities are the next step in providing the freedom to dynamically provision and manage applications based on business needs.
“However, the findings of this study reveal an important gap in the market: organisations need IT talent to manage their hybrid cloud models, especially in the next 12 to 24 months.”
Other key findings of the report include:
* Hybrid cloud better addresses business needs over single public cloud, including the price tag: 87% of respondents both internationally and at home said that hybrid cloud as an IT trend is having a positive impact on their businesses, and more hybrid cloud users reported all their needs were being met (49%) compared to single public cloud users (37%). In addition, organisations that use public cloud spend 26% of their annual IT budget on public cloud, compared to 21% in South Africa. However, only 6% of international organisations and 8% of South Africans using public cloud came in under budget, while nearly six times as many (35%) overspent in their use of public cloud resources – this was a staggering 41% locally.
* Security is top of mind for determining workloads: 71% of global and 72% of South Africa respondents surveyed for the report ranked data security and regulatory compliance as the top factor in determining where to provision their workloads. This was followed by performance at 62% (58% at home), ease of management at 53% (60% locally), and cost at 52%, which came in at 34% for South African respondents.
* App developers today are circumventing IT: 57% of respondents said their developers are circumventing IT when it comes to deciding where applications run, putting the organisation at potential risk. This number is even higher in South Africa at 77%, placing the spotlight on shadow IT.
* Finding hybrid IT talent is difficult: With clear benefits to a hybrid model, respondents say scarcity of hybrid experts is a challenge, with 54% claiming talent retention is part of the problem; locally this was substantially higher at 64%.
* EMEA is expected to surpass the Americas with hybrid cloud adoption: Regionally, the Americas reported greater use of hybrid clouds now (22%) – South Africa trails at 15% – rising to 31% within 12 months’ for global companies but just 18% for locals. However, the two-year outlook has EMEA (43%) surpassing the Americas’ hybrid plans (39%) and APJ (39%) catching up.
Nutanix commissioned Vanson Bourne to survey IT decision makers about where they are running their business applications today, where they plan to run them in the future, challenges in setting up their cloud environments and how their cloud initiatives stack up against other IT projects and priorities. The survey resulted in approximately 2,300 respondents from multiple industries, business sizes and geographies in the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA); and Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.