Shifting business priorities herald the era of multi-Cloud

“Multi-cloud is a clear reality of the next era in cloud computing. Whether it is employed to balance risk or to leverage the advantages and use cases of various cloud platforms - enterprises are increasingly moving their workloads to multiple cloud providers,” said Deepak Patil, senior vice president, Product and Technology, Virtustream. “At Virtustream, we are committed to offering the best multi-cloud platform in the industry. We will continue our decade-long track record of migrating and managing mission-critical applications in the cloud, but will also provide a flexible solution that accommodates the multi-cloud architecture enterprises require, while improving both the performance of the applications and the overall business by helping customers to realise operational efficiencies and focus on innovation.”

As enterprises increasingly focus on migrating mission-critical applications to the cloud, investments in cloud technology and resources are on the rise as well. Researchers found that almost half of enterprises report at least $50 million in annual cloud spending. In addition, a vast majority of respondents plan to increase or maintain their investments over the next two years, including resources devoted to internal staff and external vendors.

Increases in cloud adoption and investment are also driving enterprises to update and formalise their cloud strategies in a more intentional way. According to the study, nearly three in four enterprises plan to re-evaluate their cloud strategy within the next two years, or create a new one. The researchers also note that, going forward, cloud strategies must aim to create greater alignment between cloud technologies and key business objectives. When asked about their organisation’s business objectives for cloud this year, 42 percent of respondents reported operational efficiency as their top priority, followed closely by innovation and revenue growth, respectively.

Most enterprises today are adopting a multi-cloud strategy to optimise performance and meet their business objectives. As the study notes, “No single cloud platform meets all enterprise workload requirements.” As a result, enterprises are leveraging multiple public and private clouds for different application workloads, with performance cited as the top consideration for most enterprises when matching workloads with cloud environments, outranking even compliance and security.

“At Hunter Douglas, we are embracing a multi-cloud strategy for the same reasons- operational efficiencies and innovation- as cited in this study,” said Stephen Katsirubas, CIO, Hunter Douglas. “Virtustream is helping us implement and manage our new mission-critical SAP applications in the cloud, while we work with other vendors for different use cases. This strategic approach not only achieves our business imperatives, but also provides IT with increased agility and allows us to focus on driving value.”

IT leaders surveyed show a diverse set of use cases for multi-cloud platforms, and believe that a multi-cloud approach yield benefits such as improved IT infrastructure management and flexibility (33 percent), better IT cost management overall (33 percent), and improved security and compliance (30 percent). Furthermore, the study found that firms prefer vendor capabilities that deliver deeper levels of help and support when choosing a cloud vendor. IT pros are most likely to be involved in vendor choice (52 percent), with a select group of C-suite roles getting involved, led by the CIO (34 percent).