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A study released by VMTurbo argues more than half (57%) of organisations polled do not have a multi-cloud strategy in place.
The survey, which polled 1,368 organisations, also found 35% had no private cloud strategy while 28% did not have a public cloud strategy. VMTurbo was keen to note, however, that not having a strategy in this instance did not mean organisations had not examined a cloud strategy before dismissing it and sticking with on-prem; they had given adoption ‘little or no thought at all’.
31% said they had a mix of public cloud and on-prem, while an additional 28% of respondents said they did not use public cloud. 2.5% said they used only public cloud.
Responses were interesting when it came to deciding what wouldn’t be part of the public cloud first data strategy. For smaller organisations, data was generally allowed but not when it was HIPAA regulated or requested by a customer, but for those with 201 to 1000 employees and 1,001 or more employees, many responses indicated that no data could reside in the public cloud. For organisations of all sizes, compliance – especially HIPAA – and cost were key reasons why they were reticent to use public cloud.
Only 7.8% of respondents said they have not built a public cloud within their organisation, while 39% said they planned and implemented their private cloud between one and two years. Not surprisingly, larger organisations are paying for greater functionality in their private cloud; hosting VMs was the most popular among businesses of all sizes (90% for large, 67% for small), while SaaS (76% and 38% respectively) and PaaS integration (55% and 23% respectively) had similar trends. Firms of up to 200 employees only tended to have more features to their private cloud than those with 201 to 1000 workers.
Naturally, VMTurbo advocates a multi-cloud strategy as the answer, yet three in five organisations (60%) said they take over a year to plan and build their multi-cloud offerings. 6% of respondents admitted their infrastructure took more than three years to complete. 31% said they own or plan to build a multi-cloud.
“What is clear from the data is that differences in organisational structure, asset inheritance and application requirements all impact the financial effect of public and private cloud adoption,” the report notes, adding: “Multi-cloud, and eventually hybrid cloud, must of necessity reconcile these trade-offs to strike the optimal blend of capital and operational expense; application availability, reliability and performance; security and compliance and manageability.”
You can find a link to the full report here (email required).