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Most enterprises have hybrid cloud strategy: survey

Kgaogelo Letsebe
By Kgaogelo Letsebe, Portals journalist
Johannesburg, 22 May 2017
Twenty-three percent of enterprises deploying hybrid cloud said ease of use and management also played a role in making this choice.
Twenty-three percent of enterprises deploying hybrid cloud said ease of use and management also played a role in making this choice.

Some 79.7% of large organisations, with 1 000 or more employees, report they already have a hybrid cloud strategy, while 51.4% already use both public and private cloud infrastructure resources with an additional 29.2% expecting to in the coming year.

This is according to an IDC white paper titled The Power of Hybrid Cloud released earlier this month.

The white paper reveals the results of a survey Dell EMC commissioned analyst firm IDC to conduct in March.

More than 1 000 executives at medium to large enterprises running applications on public and/or private cloud were surveyed. It further pursued to understand how companies are transforming business and to analyse the benefits, costs and drivers associated with the use of cloud deployment models.

The survey results further reveal that reasons commonly given by enterprises for deploying applications to the cloud extend beyond expected cost savings, as 23% said ease of use and management also played a role, while 18% alluded the deployment to speed of provisioning, 27% wanted better global reach and 18% referred to scalability.

Mark Walker, associate VP: Sub-Saharan Africa, IDC Middle East, Africa and Turkey, says in a country like SA where the economy is stagnant and there are mounting concerns about the future of the economy, cloud IT infrastructure could be used to operationalise enterprises.

"Cloud adoption has grown by leaps and bounds in the last five to six years. We're seeing growth rates in specific areas of between 20% and 45% in public and private cloud adoption. The financial sector, which was the first to identify not only the benefits of cloud but also the downsides of using cloud infrastructure, is the sector that has been most appreciative of cloud. There has also been good uptake of cloud in the manufacturing sector and surprisingly we are seeing more uptakes in mining and the agricultural sector."

Challenges highlighted by the survey results included the confusion about the best fit for public and private cloud, cost of management and predictability of costs, worries over costs and limited infrastructure and operations tools.

A forecast by Gartner revealed nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017.

"Cloud adoption is critical to any IT transformation effort. As enterprises take this important step, they should consider platform and solution options carefully," says IDC.

"Choices made today can influence outcomes for years in the future. In that evaluation, IT buyers should look not only at the capabilities of platform architectures today but also what those capabilities will look like in a few years. For example, while public cloud options may lack the security profile some enterprises require, vendors in this space are working hard to close that gap. Or if the private cloud approach falls short on the available services an enterprise might seek to augment its performance today, buyers should expect to see a richer set of offerings in the coming years," the white paper concluded.

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