IT Survey

A survey of 962 IT decision makers conducted by CDW suggests IT teams are more confident about their ability to manage cloud computing environments, but multiple challenges remain.

The survey finds 88% of respondents said they can effectively manage their cloud environments effectively, with 50% claiming to be very effective. Nearly two-thirds 64% cited the cloud management skills of their in-house staff as playing a primary role in achieving that goal, compared to 58% that cited cloud management services from a third party. Obviously, many respondents are relying on a mix of in-house and external expertise, and despite that level of confidence, key issues hindering cloud management include lack of a governance or cloud strategy (63%), followed closely by a lack of cloud skills (61%), the survey finds.

Overall, more than three quarters of respondents (68%) said they plan to move at least one-quarter of their remaining on-premises applications to the public cloud over the next three years.

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Well over a third (36%) work for organizations that have moved one-quarter to one-half of their applications to the cloud, while an additional 35% have moved between one-half and three-quarters, the survey finds. Only 11% have moved more than three quarters of their applications. About 19% of respondents work for organizations that have moved less than one-quarter of their applications to the public cloud.

Nearly three quarters of respondents (74%) said the benefits of the cloud have lived up to their expectations, with 38% saying the benefits have been what they expected, compared to 35% reporting the benefits have surpassed expectations.

Regardless of that apparent level of satisfaction, more than two-thirds (68%) said they have, because of security concerns, repatriated workloads from a cloud provider to on-premises IT environments. Nevertheless, 48% cited improved security as one of the business benefits they have received from the public cloud. Other benefits include greater reliability and recovery capabilities (57%) and greater access to data and applications for remote users (55%) and increased agility and efficiency (51%).

Obviously, the decision to deploy workloads in a public cloud varies by use case. Some applications, for example, might have evolved in a way that makes them less expensive to now run in an on-premises IT environment. In other cases, regulatory requirements might make it impossible to deploy them in the public cloud.

Roger Haney, a chief architect for hybrid and on-premises cloud strategies at CDW, said itโ€™s clear there are still some rough edges to be worked out when it comes to mastering the nuances of cloud computing. Many organizations continue to rely on โ€œbad habitsโ€™ they have developed managing on-premises IT environments to cloud computing workloads, he noted.

Nevertheless, progress continues to be made. In fact, the survey finds 32% of respondents reporting their organization spends $50,000 to $99,999 per month on cloud services, while 30% spend $100,000 to $499,999. Only 5% spend $500,000 or more. A total of 86% said they are confident in their ability to track the costs of their public and private cloud systems, with 47% saying they are very confident. And yet, 35% of respondents identified lack of visibility is a hinderance to their cloud management efforts.

Organizations are also moving ahead deploying their next generation of applications in the cloud, noted Haney. More than two-thirds of respondents (68%) said their organizations are using artificial intelligence (AI), with 53% of them running AI workloads in a hybrid cloud environment.

The challenge now, of course, is determining how best to manage those new classes of workloads alongside all the other types of workloads that have gone before.

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