While the majority of global surveyed enterprises plan to increase hybrid cloud usage, with 91% viewing it as the ideal IT model, only 18% are presently using this model.
This was one of the findings of enterprise cloud computing company Nutanix's first annual global Enterprise Cloud Index. It measured enterprise plans for adopting private, hybrid and public clouds, and was conducted by tech research firm Vanson Bourne.
In SA, the results were comparable with the rest of the world: although 93% of the local respondents agreed hybrid cloud is the ideal future IT model, a mere 15% said they have this model in play today.
The findings also revealed that, globally and in SA, application mobility across any cloud is top priority for 97% of respondents, with 88% saying it would solve a lot of problems.
No silver bullet
However, the survey revealed public cloud is far from a silver bullet. 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 SA, this figure was 41%, a fair bit higher than the global counterparts, highlighting that cloud cost management remains a problem locally," says Nutanix.
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.
In SA, the figures were mixed. When ranking the primary benefits of hybrid cloud, 12% cited interoperability between cloud types, while the ability to move applications back and forth between clouds was perceived as the key benefit by 21% of respondents. Cost came in at 10% and security at 5%, the same as the global figure.
Positive impact
The index found hybrid cloud better addresses business needs over a single public cloud, including the price tag. In fact, 87% of global and South African respondents said hybrid cloud is having a positive impact on their business, and more hybrid cloud users reported all their needs were being met (49%) compared to single public cloud users (37%).
Furthermore, businesses that use public cloud spend 26% globally, and 21% in SA of their annual IT budget on public cloud. Only 6% globally and 8% in SA that use public cloud came in under budget, with 35% and 41% respectively saying they overspent in their use of public cloud resources.
Security remains a key consideration, with 71% globally and 72% of South African respondents saying data security and regulatory compliance are the top factors in determining where to provision their workloads. This was followed by performance at 62% (58% locally), ease of management at 53% (60% locally), and cost at 52% (34% locally).
Cloud behaviour patterns
Paul Ruinaard, country manager of Nutanix Sub-Saharan Africa, says: "Our cloud behaviour patterns and concerns emulate those of our global counterparts.
"However, where we differ is in the current, planned and future distribution of workloads, with more emphasis being placed on the use of the public cloud than in other regions."
He says local business seems to be facing significant challenges in keeping cloud spending in check.
"If we drill down into what the findings mean to SA in particular, we can surmise there is a need among local organisations to get a better handle on their cloud spend. There is a clear gap for better cloud management, and a lack of cloud resource and talent still poses a threat to local business."
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