INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
New study shows cloud
adoption boom is fuelling
transformation of IT
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C
loud adoption is booming, driving
IT transformation in the modern
enterprise, with organisations taking
advantage of software-defined infrastructure
(SDI), containers and DevOps to keep pace
with the demands of today’s markets. That’s
according to the 2017 global study of IT
professionals, commissioned and released
by enterprise open source infrastructure
solution provider SUSE®. The study provides
insights into what is driving the rapid growth
and momentum of new technologies
and strategies, and why these are vital to
IT professionals looking to support their
transformation initiatives as they seek to
improve agility, reduce risk and decrease
operational expenses. Study insights include: centre (58%), and improvement of overall
business agility and innovation (57%). Private
and hybrid models are preferred for business-
critical workloads, with 89% of respondents
stating they would like to shift from
development in public cloud to production in
their own private cloud.
Cloud growth continues with strong shift
to hybrid: Cloud technology has matured
to the extent that many businesses are
adopting a cloud-first or even a cloud-only
strategy. Growth is expected to continue for
all types of cloud, especially hybrid (66% of
respondents) and private cloud (55%), with
36% seeing public cloud growing. More than
60% of respondents cited cost reduction as a
reason for cloud adoption, with other reasons
being to improve developer and programmer
productivity (59%), consolidation of the data DevOps moves from hype to reality:
Companies are prioritising a DevOps
approach, with 86% of respondents seeing
DevOps as part of their future IT strategy.
Executing on DevOps successfully can be
complex, but SDI can provide the flexible
and modular cloud infrastructure ideally
suited for a true DevOps approach.
SDI is the future: 95% of respondents
believe software-defined infrastructure is the
future of the data centre. These individuals
see several business and technology
advantages with SDI, including faster
delivery of IT resources (65%), simplified
data centre management (63%), and the
enablement of modern IT approaches such
as DevOps and hybrid cloud (51%).
Container adoption continues to gain
traction: 27% of companies are currently
using containers, with another 44%
planning to utilise them in the next 12
months. Many see containers as an enabler
for DevOps, as they help organisations
better allocate resources, speed up the
development of applications and improve
reliability and cloud portability.
Skills and experience still a top concern:
Nearly three-fourths of organisations are
still concerned about the lack of available
skill-set in the market when moving to
cloud, with the same number concerned
about the lack of skills within their own
organisation. Accordingly, IT leaders say it’s
important to address and enhance skills in
private cloud (97%), hybrid cloud (94%)
and analytics (93%), along with emerging
areas such as IoT (91%), DevOps (89%),
containers (85%) and OpenStack (85%).
More than half say the responsibility for
developing new IT skills lies with employees
rather than the organisation.
With many companies shifting toward
private and hybrid cloud solutions, OpenStack
is becoming increasingly popular. Of the
companies surveyed, 23% have already
deployed OpenStack (up from 15% in 2015).
A total of 82% are using or plan to use
OpenStack. Companies are turning to this
open source private cloud technology because
of its flexibility, integration opportunities and
an opportunity to reduce overall costs.
“Today, every business is a digital business,
and adopting a flexible, agile software-
defined infrastructure can make the
difference between success and failure,” said
Thomas Di Giacomo, SUSE CTO. “SUSE’s
view, borne out by thousands of successful
enterprise deployments, is that innovation
and adaptability inherent in open-source
software is ideal for customers who are
meeting today’s IT requirements while
preparing for a successful tomorrow.” n
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