NTT Communications has revealed new research into how European businesses are preparing to implement hybrid cloud deployment.
The findings from 451 research revealed that two thirds of enterprise-sized firms have a strategy or pilot program for hybrid cloud in place, as interest in the technology has increased.
Out of those companies with a hybrid plan in place only 16% plan to use a single cloud for all requirements of the business, which is not the normal practice in today’s technology era. The majority of organisations will opt for a multi-cloud structure, offering them more capabilities from different providers.
Multi-cloud environments are used by 84% of enterprises to deploy workloads through a mix of cloud variations, without fully-integrated systems between them. The reason for choosing multi-cloud environments lies with the speed, cost and agility benefits it has to offer. Although multi-cloud is a popular infrastructure of choice, hybrid cloud takes cloud management to another level offering an environment that delivers interoperation and integrated management.
The survey found that those who have a hybrid plan in place chose to take this route because it offers faster deployment, improved business agility and reduced costs even further than multi-cloud.
“Among the top business drivers are the desire to improve the speed of deployment of applications and services to enhance business agility. At the same time this poses challenges including security management, operational complexity and legacy migration,” Damian Skendrovic, CEO, NTT Com Managed Services said. “Service providers will play a vital role as enterprises prioritise their needs for workload migration, on-boarding and multi-cloud management services by outsourcing to specialised infrastructure and application service providers.”
Almost half (45%) of respondents rated security and compliance as a crucial area in their hybrid cloud plans, which included data security, privacy and regulation implications; especially as the implementation of GDPR looms. To tackle the identity, compliance and connectivity challenges of hybrid infrastructure’s respondents said that managed security, networking and value-added services are the best ways to ensure this happens.
Furthermore just under a quarter (23%) of respondent’s ranked migration, on-boarding and management of cloud workloads as key hybrid-enabling services, which they would normally seek third-party service provider support.
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“Multi-cloud is often considered an interim step toward a fully hybrid cloud setup. Over 80% of the respondents to this study currently use multiple cloud environments, with varying amounts of integration, migration and interaction between them. Perhaps most significant is that approximately a quarter of companies already use some form of hybrid cloud – using the definition of seamless delivery of a single business function across multiple environments,” Liam Eagle, Research Manager, Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud, Hosting & Managed Services, 451 Research said.
The Hybrid Cloud Report was conducted in 14 European countries, among 1,500 CIOs and enterprise IT managers of large enterprises in the financial services and insurance, manufacturing, retail, professional services, distribution and logistics.
