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A new research report from Veritas Technologies has found that while almost three quarters of enterprise adopt multiple private and public cloud strategies, the need for greater security and information management is vital.

As an information management software provider, this conclusion is hardly the most surprising from Veritas. Yet the statistics about continued hybrid cloud usage are worth the entrance fee. The manufacturing industry is the most assured in terms of migrating to the public cloud with almost a third (30%) of workloads there, compared with telecommunications (24%), healthcare (23%), financial (23%) and public sector (16%), with Japan and Brazil leading the way geographically.

38% of workloads today exist in a private cloud and 28% in a public cloud; numbers which are expected to go up at rates of 7% and 18% respectively over the coming 12 months. While cost remains the primary driver and security the main inhibitor to moving to the public cloud, for more than a quarter of respondents, backup and recovery (28%), disaster recovery (27%), and data warehousing (26%) would always remain on-premises.

With the move to public cloud being described as ‘messy’ and heterogeneous, more than four in five (81%) say they rely on service providers for help with implementation, as well as ongoing operations.

“This research underlines the current state of the hybrid cloud world,” said Simon Jelley, VP product management at Veritas. “This world is more – not less – heterogeneous, which can mean increasing complexity from an information management perspective. Organisations must be more vigilant than ever in identifying IT blind spots and potential security risks to avoid unplanned downtime or an information crisis.”

The Veritas research is perhaps more optimistic than other recent reports; a study from VMTurbo earlier this month found more than half of organisations polled did not have a multi-cloud strategy in place.