Enterprise cloud adoption has been growing steadily in recent years, and this was very much evident in Denodo’s global cloud survey conducted in March, 2020. Organizations across multiple industry verticals and geographies participated in the survey and shared their key cloud initiatives as well as their motivations for moving to cloud technologies. In this post, I’ll tell you about some of the top cloud trends that are influencing contemporary business decisions, including how enterprises are adopting public and multi-cloud configurations, containers, and related services. I’ll also share some of the top trends across different areas of the cloud journey.
Cloud Adoption Trends
Cloud adoption showcases organizations’ interest and readiness in running workloads in the cloud. The economic crisis stemming from COVID-19 could accelerate this adoption, as market leaders realize that their cloud operations and infrastructure can benefit from running at maximum efficiency, especially when more employees are working remotely and can’t physically access the servers housing their data.
Close to 95% of the respondents said they were planning – or were already in the process of running – workloads in the cloud, while close to 75% said they were making some significant usage of the cloud. This number has increased by over 10% from 2019.
As part of this adoption, it became clear that close to 65% of the respondents were leveraging cloud technologies for advanced analytics and a variety of other initiatives. You can read more about those statistics in the Denodo Global Cloud Survey 2020 whitepaper.
Cloud Challenges
A number of challenges prevent enterprises from fully embracing cloud technologies. From concerns about security and performance to frustrations surrounding the management of multiple clouds and getting locked into using a specific vendor, there is no shortage of reasons why enterprises should think carefully, and due diligence is always a good practice.
Also, IT teams are sometimes unaware as to what types of compliance frameworks (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS etc.) their businesses need to adhere to.
Security, cost, and skills round up the top 3 concerns about adopting cloud technologies, while 40% of the respondents said they were researching ways to easily and cost effectively integrate data in the cloud.
Cloud Migration Trends
Once you have an adoption strategy and understand the basic cloud challenges, the next step is to kick off the migration process, and to support that you will have a few different choices.
60% or more of the respondents started with hybrid cloud deployments and close to 90% of those deployments are comprised of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). 33% or more of the respondents said they would be re-architecting their applications for the best-fit cloud architecture. The two charts below clearly highlight the trends, and you can find additional details in the survey whitepaper.
Cloud Use Cases
Each cloud platform has its own specific strengths, but the top use cases appear to be the same across the board. More than 50% of the respondents are leveraging cloud for advanced analytics, machine learning/AI, data lakes, and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), to save costs while gaining the ability to burst compute or storage across multiple workloads on the fly. Around 20% of the respondents are using cloud technologies for backup and disaster recovery purposes, including migration at a controlled pace.
Cloud Data Management and Marketplaces
As data’s center of gravity shifts to the cloud, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud architectures become the basis of data management and data flow. Across both types of cloud architecture, easy accessibility to data must be balanced with protection, to ensure maximum business value. The survey takes both considerations into account when evaluating a cloud solution.
Virtual data lakes and cloud object storage provide an effective way to integrate data in the cloud. Data virtualization was selected by 45% of the respondents, indicating that the Denodo Platform and other data virtualization solutions are among the top data integration approaches. This is probably due to a low overall TCO and advanced security management features, which has been noted by analysts.
A Promising Future
Cloud technology continues to be one of the fundamental pillars of the modern workload. Organizations are looking at cloud solutions with a lot more confidence despite growing compliance and security concerns. You can read the full report by downloading the Denodo cloud survey whitepaper.
Also, don’t miss any debate-style 3-part Experts Roundtable Series, and watch cloud service providers, systems integrators, and customer organizations duel it out with their insights into the statistics published from Denodo’s 2020 Global Cloud Survey.
COVID-19 has changed a lot in our lives, but it has had a lot of impact, especially on the technology side and the cloud side. An impressive and beautiful research article.