Cloud-based services have experienced a higher than anticipated growth since the start of the pandemic, and the market is predicted to grow by a further 19.9% between 2022 and 2029, according to a new report.
Multi-cloud data integration for data leaders
A holistic data-fabric approach to multi-cloud integration
Nearly 90% of large companies also now use a combination of cloud services - rather than hybrid cloud that utilises both private and public clouds - according to the latest multi-cloud trend report from Fortune Business Insights, which is a clear majority next to those businesses that choose a mix of vendors and technologies instead.
To complicate matters further, the majority of these companies with multi-cloud strategies have IT environments that are made up of multiple hybrid clouds. The 4th Annual Enterprise Cloud Index Analyst Report from Nutanix found that 75% of these organisations agree that an operating model with multiple private and public clouds - a hybrid multi-cloud model - was beneficial as it mitigated challenges relating to cost, security, and data integration.
It's also important to note that this only includes the clouds that IT executives are aware of. Shadow IT and cloud services used without official authorisation are a growing issue and mean the actual number of clouds used in businesses may be higher than the IT department reports.
Over the next three years, Microsoft predicts that nine in ten companies will increase spending on multi-cloud or hybrid cloud. However, as the number of multi-cloud environments increase, and with multiple workloads running, departments are at risk of cloud sprawl, where fast and unchecked cloud adoption can cause issues with security and compliance.
Many businesses also have multi-cloud environments without necessarily realising it, i.e. through the acquisition of other companies.
It’s clear that what’s next for multi-cloud will be the growth of operations teams to manage and integrate these environments with the use of formal procedures and tools - multi-cloud management - to choreograph workloads and fully embrace the benefits of multiple clouds.
And although formal multi-cloud management may currently lag behind adoption, this will start to change as more vendors start to offer multi-cloud management services to ensure their security, performance, and reliability.
This article was first published on 07/08/2019 and has since been updated.
