Enterprise Communications Featured Article

The hybrid cloud is poised for widespread adoption and a new survey of 1,000 business and IT leaders confirms its popularity. The study, commissioned by MSP Avanade, shows that global companies anticipate more than half of their applications and services will be deployed via a hybrid cloud model during the next three years.

Hybrid cloud or multi-cloud schematics generally refer to a combination of two or more cloud infrastructures, including public and private clouds, that work separately but are integrated to enable workload and services portability. They offer massive amounts of flexibility, scalability and customization for a broad range of businesses, and according to Avanade, 75 percent of C-level executives consider the hybrid cloud an “area of focus” for 2015.

That’s a pretty significant number, with around 69 percent of companies on average stating the hybrid cloud should be one of their biggest priorities in the coming year. Beyond that, 72 percent of C-level execs testify they’re likely to adopt a hybrid cloud solution within the next three years, while 76 percent report that critical applications like data and analytics will be hosted in a hybrid cloud during that timeframe rather than in a public cloud.

On the datacenter front, 65 percent of respondents said they would be willing to downsize all their datacenters to embrace public or private cloud solutions, if possible.

Despite all this enthusiasm, there are still some significant barriers to hybrid cloud adoption. One of the main factors is a failure on the part of decision makers to understand the potential of hybrid configurations, including the ability to scale up and down as needed and also the fact that hybrid clouds may include multiple public clouds. A clear plan for adoption is another barrier, with Avanade reporting that 70 percent of non-hybrid users do not have a hybrid cloud strategy.

Security and privacy are also common concerns, with 53 percent of survey respondents indicating security would be a barrier to implementing a hybrid cloud. In more positive news, however, 60 percent of participants said they believe public cloud solutions are more secure now than they were just three years ago.