When it comes to clouds, more is better
For today's cloud implementations, nobody is putting all their eggs in one basket. The trend among enterprises is to adopt multiple clouds or service providers to access and host applications.
That's the takeaway from a recent survey from Equinix, Inc., conducted by Dimensional Research. The international survey of 659 IT decision makers found that the majority (77 percent) either already have or plan to implement multi-cloud architectures in the coming year.
Cloud is on the receiving end of corporate funding as well. Close to three-quarters of enterprises, 72 percent, indicate that their budget for cloud technologies and services will increase during 2015. The largest segment, 38 percent, will be deploying three to five cloud services in the year ahead. More than half, 55 percent, already have business applications running at a colocation site.
What's driving cloud adoption? The goals cut both ways, between IT optimization and business advancement. Sixty-three percent seek cost savings, and another 52 percent are employing cloud for backup and disaster recovery. Meanwhile, 59% are seeking enhanced business agility, and 51 percent seek to improve the customer or end-user experience.
Key challenges to cloud projects include security (58 percent), costs (42 percent), and performance concerns (40 percent). In addition, legacy systems are an issue. Forty percent state applications will need to be modified, while 29 percent say they have too much invested in their on-premises infrastructure.
Cloud is an international operations for many companies. Thirty-four percent say they use clouds operating in other countries. (However, only 24 percent of North American companies use offshore cloud services.)
At least 74 percent are budgeting for a multi-cloud migration strategy. Over the next 12 months, a significant number of business applications such as storage/backup, disaster recovery and business intelligence, among others, will be deployed to the cloud. The survey also shows these same decision makers are seeking interconnected colocation data center environments because they offer direct connections to multiple cloud providers.