Cloud Computing is top transformative technology

SolarWinds has released the findings of its annual state-of-the-industry study. The new study reveals the state of today’s IT landscape: IT professionals are continuing to prioritise investments in cloud computing as they grapple with how to leverage the benefits of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. A juxtaposition of the findings with other independent research also suggests a misalignment between the IT investment priorities of the practitioners surveyed and their leaders.

• 95 percent of IT professionals surveyed indicate that cloud and/or hybrid IT are one of the top five most important technologies in their IT organisation’s technology strategy today, with 66 percent listing cloud/hybrid IT as their number one most important technology.
• When ranking the most important technologies today and for digital transformation over the next three to five years, as well as technologies with the greatest potential to provide productivity/efficiency benefits and ROI, IT professionals ranked cloud and/or hybrid IT as number one across the board (by weighted rank).

• Automation ranked as the number two priority across the board in these same categories (by weighted rank).
• IT professionals ranked big data analytics as the number three priority across the board in these same categories (by weighted rank).

• 49 percent of respondents ranked containers as the most important technology priority today, and 44 percent of respondents ranked containers as the most important technology priority three to five years from now.

• The ability for container deployments to simplify application challenges introduced by hybrid IT has caused IT professionals’ investment in container technology to skyrocket in the last 12 months. According to the 2017 SolarWinds IT Trends Report: Portrait of a Hybrid IT Organisation, only 15 percent of respondents had planned to develop containerisation skills in the year ahead.

• Concurrently, AI and ML investments are expected to increase in importance over the next three to five years.

·         42 per cent of respondents indicate AI is the biggest priority and 35 per cent of respondents indicate ML is the biggest priority three to five years from now (compared to 25 per cent and 23 per cent today, respectively).

·         Cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services^™ and Microsoft^® Azure^® are investing heavily in AI technologies and capabilities, which presents an opportunity for IT professionals to leverage existing investment in cloud offerings to experiment with and deploy AI-based services in their organisations.

·         On the weighted list of technologies IT professionals believe are needed for an IT organisation’s digital transformation over the next three to five years, AI—while gaining in importance—did not even make the top five.

o    Enterprises see AI and ML (81 per cent) and process automation and robotics (82 per cent) as important C-suite directives toward operations strategy—higher than any priority other than cost reduction (HFS Research).

o    As AI and machine learning continue to mature, IT professionals will be required to have a fundamental understanding of these technologies and their capabilities to act as an educated liaison for business leadership when it comes time to consider the benefits of adoption.

• 56 per cent of IT professionals surveyed indicated that by weighted rank, cloud/hybrid IT is the greatest challenge when it comes to implementation, rollout, and day-to-day performance. Automation and big data analytics follow closely behind.
• Nearly two-thirds (59 percent) of all IT professionals surveyed think that their IT environments are not operating at optimal levels.

• Over half of all IT pros surveyed spend less than 25 percent of their time proactively optimising performance, and only 3 per cent of IT professionals spend 75 percent or more of their time doing so.

• This echoes findings from the 2017 SolarWinds IT Trends Report: Portrait of a Hybrid IT Organisation, in which 22 percent of IT pros surveyed who migrated critical applications and infrastructure to the cloud ultimately brought back/left area(s) on-premises due to security concerns, budget, and performance issues.

·         IT professionals who indicate that their environments are not optimised (42 per cent) pointed to inadequate infrastructure as one of the top three barriers to achieving optimisation, followed closely by inadequate organisational strategy (by weighted rank).

o    To achieve true performance and work toward a successful digital transformation, IT professionals require deeper strategic collaboration with business leaders.