[ad_1]
Multicloud is the new normal. And thankfully, this isn’t just a new normal, it’s a positive one.
Recent findings show that most organizations use multiple cloud providers. Multi-cloud adoptions are helping to achieve business goals such as reliability and scalability and enhancing overall security and manageability. However, nearly all organizations (94%) admit they have some avoidable cloud costs and skills shortages continue to hold back fully proven multi-cloud success.
HaschiCorp recently released its 2022 State of the Cloud Strategy Survey: Multi-Cloud Operations. In addition to showing the positive results of multi-cloud adoption, the report also found trends in automation frameworks to help multi-cloud operations. Below, I’ll explore the report’s key takeaways to see what cloudOps and platform teams can gain from current multi-cloud trends.
Multi-cloud iS Achieving business goals
First, the use of public clouds is growing exponentially – most public cloud workloads are expected to double in the next two years. To support this migration, many organizations are moving to multi-cloud. According to a HashiCorp study, 60% already use multiple clouds and 21% plan to use multiple clouds in the next year.
The good news is that the multi-cloud strategy seems to be working. A full 90% of respondents said multicloud is helping their organizations achieve their business goals. This figure is a dramatic jump from HashiCorp’s 2021 survey, in which only 53% of organizations said that multicloud is helping them achieve their business goals.
So what exactly are companies getting out of multi-cloud adoption? Well, the top business is multi-cloud driving reliability, at 46%. This is followed by digital transformation (43%), scalability (42%), security and management (41%) and cost reduction (39%). As we can see, many clouds are equally useful for different environments.
Centralized automation supports multi-cloud
With the rise of multi-cloud, CloudOps is becoming its own discipline. Likewise, it’s common for an organization to build a dedicated cloud center of excellence (CCOE) or strategy team to manage cloud operations—86% said they rely on a cloud platform team. Such a team is often responsible for standardizing cloud services, developing cloud best practices, creating operational policies and related activities.
Cloud automation is becoming increasingly important to help cloud platform teams. The survey found that 99% consider automation important to the operation of a multi-cloud infrastructure. Multi-cloud automation can help resolve conflicts across different cloud workflows. Respondents recognized that it can be applied to provide a more flexible infrastructure, improve security and management, and make better use of cloud resources. Improving security is especially important here, as 89% of security is a key driver of cloud success.
So how are these automations built? Well, people aren’t developing cloud automation tools from scratch – only 27% do so. It is very common to use open source or commercial tools for cloud automation. Whether these devices operate ‘as-a-service’ or are self-hosted is pretty even across the board.
Regardless of the type of device, companies are reaping the benefits of using middleware to manage their multi-cloud operations strategy. 49% rating scale as a benefit. This is followed by infrastructure provisioning (42%), cost optimization (40%) and more flexible deployment options (39%).
(Soon) Everyone is overspending on multiple clouds.
Not surprisingly for some, the study shows that 94% of organizations are wasting money in the cloud. The top areas contributing to cloud overcrowding and waste are: idle or underutilized resources (66%), overprovisioning (59%), lack of necessary skills (47%) and manual handling (37%).
Optimizing the cloud overrun dilemma and reducing idle resources requires forethought. As I mentioned earlier, some organizations employ a cloud economist or cloud CFO to manage the ever-increasing cloud costs. 43% say they have a consistent and automated set of tools to help with this mission or lead to better use of cloud resources.
Although wasteful spending is widespread, most companies forecast their cloud spending accurately. More than half (57%) said their organization’s projected cloud spending in 2021 is in line with their actual cloud spending.
Getting the most out of multiple clouds
Multi-cloud is becoming more common in all parts of IT—like middleware to perform and standardize logic between multiple clouds. And, the widespread commercial success of multi-cloud brands has increased maturity in this area.
Yet, mass cloud does not come without challenges. Skills shortages are the top barrier to an organization’s multi-cloud adoption. Businesses must face other challenges to fully realize multi-cloud, such as siled teams, compliance and risk management, and a lack of training. Standardized operating models, along with common workflows and policies, are possible ways to combat these roadblocks.
The HashiCorp study surveyed 1,000 technology professionals and decision makers from around the world. In addition, HashiCorp collaborated with Forrester to provide additional analysis of the findings. Check out the full report here to read the results for yourself.
[ad_2]
Source link
