Report reveals cloud innovation, efficiency and growth critical to corporate strategy

The global report titled Future of Compute conducted in association with Google Cloud, highlights the increasingly rapid pace of cloud adoption and surveyed 1,400-plus IT executives.

More than half (51 per cent) of all survey respondents said that 100 per cent of their applicable infrastructure now resides in the cloud, while (49 per cent) said they plan to move more of their workloads into the cloud as possible.

According to Angeline Maronese, managing director for Australia and New Zealand at Rackspace Technology, the latest research found Australian IT leaders understand that cloud-based services enable a greater degree of innovation – whether that’s expanding their organisation’s range of products and services, improving customer experiences or enhancing the customer journey.

“Despite this, many organisations are still struggling to maximise the full potential of cloud."

"Few IT leaders believe their organisation is fully leveraging all the benefits of public cloud (29 per cent) and private cloud (23 per cent), citing security concerns, data privacy and navigating compliance regulations as obstacles.”

“While being cloud-native is integral in the creation and evolution of digital services across all industries, simply adopting new technologies and processes piecemeal isn’t enough. A cultural and operational shift is vital in the transition to solve challenges that enable business growth and innovation,” Maronese said.

The report also found that more than two-thirds of respondent’s compute workloads are now supported by public cloud, co-location 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.

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Underscoring the increasingly central role that technology is playing in transforming operations, more than a third (35 per cent) 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 organisation, according to Jeff DeVerter, chief technology evangelist at Rackspace Technology.

“In this environment, IT leaders have the power to help companies and organisations 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,” DeVerter said.

Rapid cloud growth, use of containerised applications increase

Rackspace and Google Cloud researchers found that the cloud market grew 23 per cent to $323.3 billion over the past year, according to Gartner, which projects a future growth rate of 18 per cent annually.

Accordingly, most respondents say they are already enjoying the benefits of a public cloud (63 per cent) or a private cloud (66 per cent). In addition, public cloud investments represent as much as 40 per cent of most IT budgets, with private clouds at 30 per cent.

Containerised applications are also continuing to grow in popularity as organisations shift away from onsite data centres. The most common tactic among organisations (85 per cent) employing public cloud remains “lifting and shifting” using cloud based VMs (virtual machines), but 84 per cent of respondents say they are investing in public cloud with containers. Sixty-two percent of respondents say their use of containerised 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 onsite data centres (55 per cent), managed hosting (52 per cent), public cloud (51 per cent) and co-location (34 per cent). However, 60 per cent of respondents also said they envision not owning a data centre 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 multi-cloud 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.

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