State of Application Strategy 2024: A hybrid reality – how enterprises are managing complex applications

If marketing buzzwords hold any weight, then it’s clear that the enterprise industry has largely embraced a hybrid approach. 

“Hybrid” is a broad term, much like “cloud”, “edge”, or even “AI”, and it is typically used to describe “something made up of two different components.” Alternatively, the word ‘heterogeneous’ could easily replace the term ‘hybrid’, as it carries nearly the same meaning. 

In this context, a hybrid application portfolio refers to the collection of applications managed by an organisation which spans both modern (mobile, microservices) and traditional (client-server, monoliths, three-tier web) application types. This same hybrid notion applies across various other aspects of the enterprise including architectures, operations, and the environments which organisations select to deploy and manage their applications. 

That said, why is recognising hybrid structures so crucial? Because hybrid systems introduce unique challenges that are not present in more uniform, single-component environments of deployment and operations. The heterogeneity involved means different teams, tools, practices, and processes are needed to manage these systems.  

This is exactly the state of the typical enterprise today: it is already experiencing the full force of this hybrid complexity, and it’s clear it’s a permanent fixture for the foreseeable future. When viewed through this lens, it’s evident that organisations are unequivocally hybrid, no matter the area being considered. 

Every enterprise is facing challenges of managing at least one form of heterogeneity, and often many more. This includes everything from application portfolios to architectural design, operational models to deployment environments.

Hybrid systems affect all aspects of an enterprise, from strategy to execution. This is driving a growing interest in technologies and trends that aim to address and simplify the complexity inherent in managing heterogeneous infrastructure, applications, and operations.

According to F5’s 2024 State of Application Strategy survey, respondents who reported having multiple components of a single application running across multiple clouds expressed more enthusiasm for technologies such as GraphQL, microservices networking, and large language models (LLMs). Furthermore, these respondents were also more drawn to trends such as multi-cloud networking, IT centralisation, and supercloud – all of which are aimed at solving the complexities of connecting, securing, and managing the modern distributed enterprise.

The complexity surrounding tools and APIs continues to be an almost universal pain point – with 94% of respondents this year citing it as their most frustrating challenge with multi-cloud environments. Beyond this, complexity from heterogeneity also shows up in other areas; 52% of respondents identified difficulties with tooling as a prominent obstacle to automating application delivery and security. Additionally, across 30 different application services tracked – ranging from network security to CDNs, VDI, and SSL VPNs – 93% of respondents reported difficulty in deploying each of these 30 application services, highlighting the scale of this challenge.

As such, these services don’t always work together seamlessly; in actuality, many operate in entirely separate domains with different operational and management approaches – contributing to the underlying complexity of hybrid systems. This is the reality of hybrid: while this complexity has always existed, it has more recently been laid bare by the acceleration of digital transformation. 

Escaping the hybrid reality is virtually impossible – unless an organisation fully commits to a single public cloud provider that offers all the necessary service to operate, deliver, and secure applications. However, this is not a widespread trend. Only 2% of organisations are “all in” with a single public cloud provider, and among those, only 34% have fully committed their investments to that provider. This shows that businesses operating within a single cloud environment are truly outliers. 

Today’s enterprises are multi-cloud, hybrid environments by default. As a result, traditional solutions must adapt to also become distributed, multi-cloud, hybrid services capable of efficiently delivering, securing, and optimising every application and API – wherever they are.