Study shows multi-cloud is here to stay, but complexity and challenges remain

Research reveals multi-cloud deployments are on the rise, but enterprises look to hybrid multi-cloud.

Nutanix, a leader in hybrid multi-cloud computing, has announced the findings of its fourth global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption.

The research showed that multi-cloud is currently the most commonly used deployment model and adoption will jump to 64% in the next three years. But the complexity of managing across cloud borders remains a major challenge for enterprises, with 87% agreeing that multi-cloud success requires simpler management across mixed-cloud infrastructures.

To address top challenges related to interoperability, security, cost and data integration, 83% of respondents agree that a hybrid multi-cloud model is ideal.

“While businesses are now viewing and using IT more strategically than ever before, the complexity of multi-cloud is creating challenges that are standing in the way of cloud success,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, President and CEO at Nutanix. “Solving these complexities is giving way to a new hybrid multi-cloud model that makes cloud an operating model rather than a destination.”

This year, survey respondents were asked about their current cloud challenges, how they’re running business applications now and where they plan to run them in the future. Respondents were also asked about the impact of the pandemic on recent, current, and future IT infrastructure decisions and how IT strategy and priorities may change because of it.

Key findings from this year’s report include:

• Top multi-cloud challenges include managing security (49%), data integration (49%) and cost (43%) across cloud borders. While multi-cloud is the most commonly used operating model, and the only one expected to grow, most enterprises are struggling with the reality of operating across multiple clouds, private and public. This reality is not going away, and more and more IT leaders realize that there is no one-size fits all approach to the cloud, making hybrid multi-cloud, an IT operating model with multiple clouds both private and public with interoperability between them, ideal according to the majority of respondents.
• The pandemic has changed how nearly all organizations operate, and multi-cloud supports this new way of working. Well over half of respondents (61%) say they’re focused on offering more flexible work setups because of the pandemic. Most organizations report that while their remote workforces may shrink or grow, they are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Multi-cloud offers the most agile IT environment for supporting this flexibility by distributing data to diverse geolocations for user proximity and Business Continuity.
• Application mobility is top of mind. Nearly all organizations (91%) have moved one or more applications to a new IT environment over the last 12 months. However, 80% of respondents agree that moving a workload to a new cloud environment can be costly and time-consuming. They cite security (41%) most often as the reason for the move, followed by performance (39%), and gaining control of the application (38%).

For the fourth consecutive year, Vanson Bourne conducted research on behalf of Nutanix, surveying 1,700 IT decision-makers around the world in August and September 2021. The respondent base spanned the following geographies: the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and the Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region.