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Study shows future of healthcare is shaped by hybrid cloud
Nutanix , a leader in private cloud , hybrid and multi-cloud computing , has announced the healthcare industry findings of its third annual Enterprise Cloud Index Report , measuring healthcare organisations ’ plans for adopting private , hybrid and public clouds .
The findings point to a growing trend within the sector : with more than two-thirds ( 70 %) of respondents reporting that COVID-19 has caused IT to be viewed more strategically within their organisations and the pandemic has accelerated Digital Transformation that is likely to shape the future of healthcare .
As COVID-19 hit , healthcare organisations looked for ways to effectively support the skyrocketing technology demands of the COVID-19 pandemic from enabling remote work , to implementing telehealth practices , to supporting an increasing patient load .
As a result , they sought out IT solutions that could support their organisations ’ growing needs and support their Digital Transformation . With Digital Transformation top of mind , the healthcare industry is more bullish than any other sector about adopting a hybrid IT model , with 95 % of respondents agreeing that hybrid is their ideal choice .
Today , more than half of healthcare respondents have increased their public cloud ( 56 %) and hybrid cloud ( 51 %) use and nearly half ( 46 %) have invested more in private cloud environments in an effort to quickly provide new work-from-home employees with access to IT resources .
While 77 % of healthcare respondents previously had some employees working remotely one year ago , that percentage has increased to 93 % this year since the onset of the pandemic .
Other key findings of this year ’ s report include :
• The future of healthcare is dependent on decommissioning of legacy architecture : Currently , more healthcare companies run exclusively traditional , non-cloud-enabled data centres ( 27 %) than any other industry , compared to 18 % globally . Over the next five years , however , healthcare organisations plan to shrink that gap with an expected 21 percentage-point drop in legacy data centre installations and a corresponding 32 point increase in hybrid cloud deployments .
• Healthcare organisations look to hyperconverged infrastructure to support IT modernisation and pave the way to hybrid cloud : Hyperconverged infrastructure is often seen as the basis for a hybrid cloud infrastructure , the HCI of the next decade , as it helps accelerate cloud adoption by sharply reducing the time it takes to build the software-defined infrastructure necessary to support private cloud , while also providing the scalability of cloud technology . About 64 % of healthcare respondents say they ’ ve either fully deployed HCI or are in the process of doing so , significantly outpacing the approximately 50 % of global respondents who are using or deploying hyperconverged infrastructure .
• Security , privacy and compliance pose a significant challenge to the industry ' s Digital Transformation : 58 % of healthcare respondents described security as a significant challenge , compared to 51 % of global respondents . Healthcare respondents also ranked cost control ( 45 %) and Business Continuity ( 45 %) more often as significant challenges than any other industry .
• As the healthcare industry evolves , cost advantages will be the main gating factor for IT infrastructure deployments : All industries , including healthcare , indicated that security , privacy and compliance solution strengths were highly important to infrastructure decision-making .
The 2020 respondent base spanned the Americas , Europe , the Middle East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific region . p
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