New research reveals how Hybrid Cloud is really being implemented across 14 European countries

The Pan-European Hybrid Cloud Report, commissioned by NTT Com in partnership with Dell EMC, was conducted by research firm 451 Research in 14 European countries, among 1,500 CIOs and enterprise IT managers of large enterprises in key sectors including financial services and insurance, manufacturing, retail, professional services, distribution and logistics. The survey reveals that almost two-thirds of enterprise-sized firms have a strategy or pilot program for hybrid cloud in place. These companies currently manage their cloud environments in different ways but only 16 percent plan to use a single cloud for all requirements. Over 80 percent of enterprises deploy workloads using a mix of cloud types, without fully-integrated or completely formalised interactions between them. This multi-cloud model is considered to be the norm for their IT infrastructure. The adoption of hybrid cloud takes this one step further, creating an environment that delivers a high degree of interoperation and integrated management.

Key findings include:

•             Multi-cloud environments are now in use by 84 percent of enterprises for reasons of perceived speed, cost and agility benefits, and hybrid cloud adoption prevails as the preferred route. 

•             Some 63 per cent of enterprises polled now have a formal strategy or pilot in place for hybrid cloud. Among the advantages being sought are faster deployment, improved business agility and reduced costs.

•             Shifting legacy workloads from their current environment ‘as-is’ or ‘after refactoring’ is driving the largest proportion – 44 percent – of enterprise deployments to the private cloud.

•             Data security, privacy and regulatory obligations, including concerns about General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), will dictate the location of hybrid cloud data, and 45 percent of enterprises rated security and compliance as critically important in their hybrid cloud plans.

•             Some 23 per cent of enterprises polled ranked the migration, onboarding and management of cloud workloads as key hybrid-enabling services for which they would seek third-party service provider support.

•             Managed security, networking and value-add services are the top three ways that companies plan to tackle identity, compliance and connectivity challenges of hybrid infrastructure. 

•             Some 48 per cent of large and multi-national enterprises will use Azure Stack hybrid cloud, to complement their existing legacy environments or as a strategic gateway to transform into as-a-service IT delivery operations, aided by their service providers.

There are many reasons for the increased interest in hybrid cloud, according to Damian Skendrovic, CEO, NTT Com Managed Services: “Among the top business drivers are the desire to improve the speed of deployment of applications and services to enhance business agility. At the same time this poses challenges including security management, operational complexity and legacy migration.”  

And while enterprises may use in-house resources to achieve these goals, many will not be in a position to do so, the study points out. “Service providers will play a vital role as enterprises prioritise their needs for workload migration, onboarding and multi-cloud management services by outsourcing to specialised infrastructure and application service providers,” added Skendrovic.

“Multi-cloud is often considered an interim step toward a fully hybrid cloud setup. Over 80 percent of the respondents to this study currently use multiple cloud environments, with varying amounts of integration, migration and interaction between them. Perhaps most significant is that approximately a quarter of companies already use some form of hybrid cloud – using the definition of seamless delivery of a single business function across multiple environments,” explained Liam Eagle, Research Manager, Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud, Hosting & Managed Services, 451 Research.