Survey underscores rapid pace of cloud adoption

Rackspace Technology has published the results of a new global survey, conducted in association with Google Cloud, of 1,400+ IT executives, Future of Compute, that highlights the increasingly rapid pace of cloud adoption. According to the survey, the question is no longer whether organizations should migrate to the cloud, but how they can leverage the cloud for innovation, efficiency, and growth.

More than half (51%) of all survey respondents said that 100% of their applicable infrastructure now resides in the cloud, while (49%) said they plan to move more of their workloads into the cloud as possible. In addition, more than two thirds of respondents’ compute workloads are now supported by public cloud, colocation, and managed hosting services. At the same time, IT infrastructure spread has reached an equilibrium and leaders expect it to hold steady over the next three to five years.

Underscoring the increasingly central role that technology is playing in transforming operations, more than a third (35%) of respondents say IT executives play a key role in driving the direction of the company, as silos between functional areas continue to dissolve.

“Driven in large part by the power of the cloud, today’s technology landscape is evolving at a breakneck pace, while IT is penetrating all areas of the organization,” said Jeff DeVerter, Chief Technology Evangelist at Rackspace Technology. “In this environment, IT leaders have the power to help companies and organizations see around corners to solve both their short-term and long-term business challenges and provide critical guidance in the areas of business growth, security, efficiency, and customer experience.”

Rapid Cloud Growth, Use of Containerized Applications Increase

The cloud market grew 23% to $323.3 billion over the past year, according to Gartner, who projects a future growth rate of 18% annually. Accordingly, most respondents say they are already enjoying the benefits of a public cloud (63%) and/or a private cloud (66%). In addition, public cloud investments represent as much as 40% of most IT budgets, with private clouds at 30%.

Containerized applications are also continuing to grow in popularity as organizations shift away from on-site data centers. The most common tactic among organizations (85%) employing public cloud remains “lifting and shifting” using cloud based VMs (virtual machines), but 84% of respondents say they are investing in public cloud with containers. 62% of respondents say their use of containerized applications will increase in the next two years.

Future Cloud Directions

The cloud revolution brought an influx of advancements to the world of compute; however, the past decade of inundation is settling into a more level pool of opportunity. Over the next 12 months, respondents anticipate their infrastructure spending will include on-site data centers (55%), managed hosting (52%), public cloud (51%), and colocation (34%). However, 60% of respondents also said they envision not owning a data center in the next five years.

Security, data privacy and control understandably remain as top concerns among IT leaders, particularly for public cloud use cases. While these concerns present valid obstacles to getting more companies fully reaping the benefits of the cloud, the reality is that heterogenous multicloud infrastructure is proving to be the norm. Companies that focus their resources on successfully addressing security and data privacy concerns while innovating with cloud can expect to achieve a significant competitive advantage.