Cloud computing is now nearly ubiquitous with its role in digital operations for all businesses, and what it’s done to replace the need for physical storage and a whole host of other benefits has obviously been a great development. It’s not often that a technological advance of this kind works so well when still in its infancy, but in fairness the cloud is something that was a natural outgrowth of many other pivotal gains in computing technology coming together and brining in other key components.
Evolution is always a part of these developments too, and when a new way of ‘doing thing’s is so eagerly adopted by so many people those evolutions tend to come fairly fast and furious. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like every good Canadian web hosting provider in that we’re a little more front row than others for watching these types of major advances as they take shape, and some of us also have the web and computer savvy to have a better handle on what it all means and how it promises to add positive changes to the digital work world.
Being agile is an absolute necessity in the IT world, and especially considering the roadmap is always changing. Not to say that full one-80s are often required, but sometimes there is a need to plant your foot in the grass and pivot hard. Revisiting cloud infrastructure is always going to be a part of this, and more often than not it’s caused by workloads increasing massively in size overnight. That’s a term used loosely, and while it’s not exactly overnight the message is that big change requirements can come around surprisingly quickly and you need to be able to pivot and rechart without inflexibility.
At the forefront of all of this is a trend where multi-cloud strategies are seen as ideal fits for businesses, and that’s what we’ll look at here today.
Clearer Appeal
What is being seen now is multi-Cloud strategies emerging as a dominant part of many organizations’ long-term IT roadmaps. A recent study conducted by an IT services firm in the US and UK came back with some interesting findings regarding what’s to be in the near future for multi-cloud. The report paints a clear picture of the industry and makes clear how companies’ investments in cloud services are different than they were not even so long ago.
What was interesting to note first was the nearly half of respondents were indicating they have chosen a new provider in the last year, and this shows that shares of the cloud market are very much up for grabs between those major providers. What needs to be a primary focus for organisations right now is investing in the correct cloud strategy for their unique IT workloads.
Standard interests like pricing or vendor incentives, security and technical requirements are the top drivers when it comes to decision making related to cloud infrastructure, and it’s among these metrics that the bulk of decisions are made around what is going to serve the company best. Around 56% of respondents also indicated that security considerations will be impacting final decisions around choosing a provider in a big way.
42% Considering Multi-Cloud Strategy
So as we see that organizations are indeed moving toward multi-cloud strategies, it’s important not to overlook how private cloud environments hold onto their importance for organizations trying to make the best placement decisions when it comes to workload-from-cloud.
Here are key findings from the survey:
- Microsoft Azure leads the way as the most popular public cloud provider (58%), and next are Google Cloud (41%), IBM (40%) and AWS (38%). Note that of the respondents only 1% stated having always been with the same cloud provider or platform.
- Nearly half (46%) of respondents have gone with a new provider or platform within the last year — and more than 25% of them have made that move sometime in the past 6 months
- Just 1% of respondents indicated having the same cloud provider or platform since their initial foray into cloud computing
- 42% of respondents are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy
- The vast majority of private cloud users (80% of them) stated better information security was their primary reason for going with a private cloud environment.
- 89% of healthcare organizations and 81% of public sector interests foresee a continuing need for their private cloud over the next 5 years and beyond
Following all the major disruptions seen over the last year and some, the need for a modern technology stack is pushing cloud adoption hard in every industry. Capitalizing on the opportunities available in the market right now means cloud providers must meet these organization’s complex security and legacy workload needs.
