TRENDING
Enthusiasm could be blunted by a lack of emerging , relevant skillsets in the market .
application security and delivery technology solutions that support them – closer to users .
On top of that , two-thirds were using at least two methods to create modern workloads ( the combination of traditional and modern app components that result from modernisation ). Of the respondents claiming to use only one method , 44 %, said that they were enabling modern interfaces , either via APIs or components such as containers . A mere 11 %, mainly technology organisations , are exclusively refactoring applications .
“ Add to that the use of Edge Computing and we ’ re starting to see incredible momentum for the emergence of truly adaptive applications that can grow , shrink , defend and heal themselves based on the environment they ’ re in and how they ’ re being used .”
App modernisation efforts double and AI adoption triples
Since the last SOAS report , the adoption rate of AI and Machine Learning , a marker of late-phase Digital Transformation , more than tripled to 56 %.
In other forward-looking developments , over half of respondents said they now treat infrastructure as code . The report shows that organisations using this approach are twice as likely to deploy apps more frequently , even when using automation . They are also four-times more likely to have fully automated application pipelines and twice as likely to have more than half of their application portfolios deployed using fully automated pipelines .
Architectural trends and shifts
The vast majority of organisations will continue to manage both traditional and modern applications and architectures . This expectation is supported by the 87 % of survey respondents claiming that they now juggle both – an 11 % increase over 2020 . Nearly half of all organisations – 30 % more than last year – said they are managing at least five different architectures .
According to almost half of the survey respondents , the pandemic was the main factor in accelerating movement to the cloud and SaaS . More than two-thirds of respondents ( 68 %) are now hosting at least some of their application security and delivery technologies in the cloud . Simultaneously , organisations are positioning themselves to address the architectural complexity that results from adding SaaS and Edge solutions , maintaining on-premises and multi-cloud environments and modernising applications .
Lori MacVittie , Principal Technical Evangelist ,
Office of the CTO at F5
Furthermore , 57 % respondents embraced digital expansion , which is a 37 % increase on last year . The latter shows an intensifying focus on business process automation , orchestration and digital workflows , stitching together disparate applications to create seamless digital experiences . The same objective is being achieved through the use of APIs .
There was also an eye-catching 133 % annual rise in respondents saying they are modernising internal or customer-facing applications , with 77 % now doing so .
Application security and delivery solutions were also in the SOAS spotlight . The critical roles these enabling technologies play in customer experience and service level agreements ( SLAs ) are now recognised by nearly four out of five respondents . SaaS-based security was identified as organisations ’ top overall strategic focus over the next two to five years .
Growing ambitions at the Edge
Edge Computing is also set to attract plenty of attention in 2021 . As many as 76 % of organisations surveyed say they have implemented or are actively planning Edge deployments , with improving application performance and collecting data / enabling analytics as the primary drivers . Moreover , 39 % believe that Edge Computing
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