A survey of 1,800 senior IT decision-makers finds that more than half (52 percent) of respondents said their organization relies on professional services for specific cloud-related needs, with 28 percent being heavily dependent on professional cloud partners for all aspects of cloud adoption, migration, and operation.
Conducted by the market research firm Illuminas, the survey also identifies cost management (45 percent) and security and disaster recovery to improve operational resilience (44 percent) as major priorities.
MSPs and the hybrid cloud edge
These focus areas (cost, security, and resilience) are where managed service providers (MSPs) and consultants often bring more expertise than internal IT teams. As a result, the demand for services that extend beyond basic infrastructure provisioning continues to rise.
The challenge organizations increasingly face, however, is managing what has evolved into a mix of public and private clouds. The survey, for example, finds 53 percent of respondents identify private clouds that are either hosted in some type of colocation facility or on-premises data center as a top priority for deploying new workloads over the next three years, compared to 50 percent that are prioritizing public clouds.
Overall, a full 82 percent of respondents are running workloads in both private and public cloud computing environments, with three-quarters (75 percent) noting that this split is intentional. Primary reasons cited for deploying workloads on a private cloud are security (81 percent), reliable performance (81 percent), and simplification of IT operations (78 percent). The reasons cited most often for using public cloud services are scalability (84 percent), reliable performance (84 percent), and simplification of IT operations.
In contrast, security- and compliance-sensitive applications are the most likely workloads to be deployed in a private cloud (51 percent), followed by data-intensive applications (46 percent), the survey finds.
Interestingly, from an MSP perspective, IT teams appear to be slightly more challenged when it comes to managing private clouds. A third (33 percent) of respondents reported that siloed IT teams present the most significant challenge to private cloud adoption, followed closely by the lack of in-house skills and expertise (30 percent) as a barrier to private cloud adoption.
The case for centralized control
At the same time, IT teams are moving to centralize the management of public and private clouds. In fact, 81 percent now structure their technical organizations around a platform team rather than relying on traditional technology silos. More than three-quarters (76 percent) said that the public cloud is creating new non-core IT silos. Additionally, 77 percent believe these silos are deploying resources that may not adhere to established policies or best practices.
Nearly half of respondents (49 percent) estimate they waste more than a quarter of their public cloud spend, and 31 percent report that the waste exceeds 50 percent. Only 6 percent believe they are not wasting any of the budget allocated to public clouds. A total of 70 percent also said these silos make it difficult for IT to govern cost and security, with 92 percent noting they trust private cloud for security and compliance needs.
Two-thirds (66 percent) are “very” or “extremely” concerned about storing data in public cloud environments. Additionally, 61 percent said they are “very” or “extremely” concerned about keeping up to date with changing compliance requirements when using public clouds.
Two-thirds (66 percent) are “very” or “extremely” concerned about public cloud compliance, and most organizations cite security as the primary reason for migrating a workload from a public to a private cloud. Well over two-thirds of respondents (69 percent) are considering moving workloads from the public cloud back to private cloud environments. One-third have already repatriated some workloads.
Put it altogether, and it’s clear that as cloud computing becomes more complex, the need to rely more on external expertise to manage multiple classes of platforms is becoming more pronounced with each passing day.
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