Public Cloud Growth to Outpace Private Cloud in Next 12 Months: Report
The variety of environments used by enterprises is increasing the need for effective information management, as nearly three-quarters of enterprises now use multiple cloud infrastructures, according to new research from Veritas. The State of the Hybrid Cloud report shows both business-critical and non-critical workloads in the public cloud doubling over the next two years, possibly indicating an increasing level of trust in cloud technology.
The study results are drawn from a survey of 1,800 enterprise IT decision makers from around the world, and show that 38 percent of workloads are located in private cloud, and 28 percent in public cloud.
Over the next 12 months, the report predicts growth in public cloud workloads will far outpace private cloud, with 18 percent growth, compared to 7 percent, respectively. On-premises workloads have fallen to 34 percent of all enterprise workloads, and will fall to around 25 percent in the next year, according to the report.
While 74 percent of enterprises use multiple cloud infrastructure vendors, nearly a quarter (23 percent) currently use four or more, creating a potentially challenging burden for IT departments of protecting, managing, and utilizing data across environments.
“This world is more – not less – heterogeneous, which can mean increasing complexity from an information management perspective,” said Simon Jelley, Veritas VP of Product Management, Veritas Technologies. “Organizations must be more vigilant than ever in identifying IT blind spots and potential security risks to avoid unplanned downtime or an information crisis.”
While security remains the top barrier to public cloud adoption, it is also the top driver of satisfaction among those who have already adopted it. The report mentions one respondent explicitly stating “I would have adopted cloud earlier had we known how secure and safe it actually was.” This clearly indicates the need for better communication by service providers about cloud security.
Most enterprises (81 percent) use service provider support for implementation and operations. Those that do so report that cloud systems have exceeded their expectations much more frequently.
In addition to information about different types of workloads, the report also breaks down adoption by industry and geographically, revealing that enterprises in the US have significantly less of their workloads in the cloud than those in Japan and Brazil.
As rapid hybrid adoption continues and enterprises take on more diverse infrastructures, there are “best practices” they can follow, which Ipswitch’s Joe Krivickas recently highlighted for the WHIR, along with additional management challenges.
While competing cloud vendors may not be helpful for their enterprise customers trying to manage different environments, partnerships like the one announced between VMware and IBM in February can ease the complexity of hybrid cloud.
