Survey focuses on the need for hybrid help

"Today, modern organisations need to lead with flexibility, and a critical aspect of this is decentralising resources to make them more readily available," said Dom Poloniecki, General Manager, Sales, Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa at Nutanix. “By using multiple clouds, whether public, private or at the edge, businesses can simply bring their IT infrastructure where it is most needed. But, as we saw in the research, this flexibility is only possible with consistent constructs, operations and tooling across multiple clouds, making a hybrid cloud environment ideal.”

The report, commissioned by Nutanix and created by independent market research firm Vanson Bourne, analysed key challenges businesses are currently facing when managing both public and private cloud infrastructures. The company surveyed 650 IT decision-makers from multiple industries, business sizes and geographies in the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA); and Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) regions.

Additional findings include:

• Public Cloud Alone is Not Always the Answer: Public cloud revolutionised the IT industry, offering more agility and operational efficiency. And while it’s ideal for some applications and workloads, it’s not for others, leading businesses to embrace a hybrid infrastructure. According to the research, the majority of respondents have concerns about running business-critical applications, those most vital to their business, on public cloud, specifically around reliability (75%), portability (73%), and cost (72%). Additionally, some are simply unable to move their business-critical applications, due to complexity or cost. For example, the need to re-architect or re-platform applications (75%) and the complexity of the migration (71%) are top concerns preventing respondents from porting applications.
• Hybrid Widens the IT Skills Gap: Although many businesses struggle to find enough qualified IT talent, the issue grows when looking for professionals who can manage both a public and a private cloud infrastructure, as currently the two environments require different skill sets. Most organisations (88%) are facing challenges in ensuring their IT staff has the necessary skills to manage a hybrid IT infrastructure, and over half (53%) see this as a top concern. 
• Skill Gaps Create Silos and Inefficiencies: Given the different skills required to manage public and private cloud infrastructures, businesses often need to rely on different teams creating silos, something that nearly all (95%) respondents encountered. Most importantly, they often impact the bottom line, something even more concerning at a time when many businesses are focused on optimising resources. Nearly half of respondents identified resource sprawl (49%), an increase in costs (45%), and/or a waste of resources (43%) as concerns.
• Portability is a Must and Not Just For Applications: For most businesses (88%) software licensing is a key aspect of a hybrid IT infrastructure, as many have run into difficulties surrounding licensing (58%) or vendor lock-in (58%) when moving to public cloud. Additionally, nearly two thirds (65%) are willing to consider subscription licensing for their IT infrastructure.

Businesses are looking for flexibility. It’s no longer a choice between private and public, or between different public cloud providers. Organisations need a solution providing consistent experience, tooling and operational practices across multiple clouds to address many of the challenges and operational inefficiencies they’re currently facing. An optimal hybrid cloud environment provides the consistency they need to take advantage of the full flexibility of multiple clouds, whether private or public.