IDC has revealed that only 10% of European businesses are ready to implement multi-cloud infrastructure, with the majority of businesses sticking to one cloud vendor.

In fact, the company’s report revealed that 80% of businesses are stuck between a hybrid and fully cloud-based infrastructure, while the remaining 10% have made no headway at all.

Over a third of European businesses have no plans to extend their infrastructure beyond their current suppliers, although the UK industry would appear to be more open to changing vendors, with 29% saying they anticipate migration in the next 12 months.

«Virtually all European enterprises will soon use multiple cloud services,” Giorgio Nebuloni, research director, European Multicloud Infrastructure at IDC. “The smart ones are already actively planning for those services to be benchmarked, price-compared, and selected against each other based on the workload need.’

However, those that are lagging behind need to make some substantial changes to their business model.

Nebuloni explained that for businesses to see the benefit to using multiple cloud vendors, they must ensure they have a single point of control in their organisation that can ensure software and services stay aligned. They also need the skillsets, processes, and data centre infrastructure in place before they can evolve.

The cloud is not a one size fits all scenario and different workloads suit different environments, both on public and private clouds and it’s not necessarily the right strategy to focus on the big vendors – the entire market must be explored.

“While the perception of multi-cloud infrastructure as an end goal certainly resonates with European organizations, there remains uncertainty over what a multi-cloud strategy looks like and how this strategy should be disseminated within an organization,» said Michael Ceroici, research analyst, European Multicloud Infrastructure, IDC.

«Elements from infrastructure technology, aligning cloud vision between different business lines, and internal cloud expertise all play a part in facilitating successful multi-cloud endeavours.»