Almost a quarter (24%) of respondents said they use more than three cloud service providers, while more than a quarter (28%) use just one. Just less than a quarter (23%) use two providers, and 13% use three.
“It’s interesting,” said Mortell, “to see that businesses are now using more than one cloud service provider to carry out their workloads—something we have been preparing for, for some time. As businesses embark on their digital transformation, their requirements become more complex and they find themselves needing different cloud service providers for different tasks.”
Data sharing
A long-promised benefit of cloud computing was the ability to share data across previously siloed structures. However, most respondents (70%) said that their cloud providers are completely independent, compared to less than a quarter (23%) who said there was some data sharing and just 7% who said there was complete integration.
“As businesses start to embrace multi-cloud solutions,” said Mortell, “they will realise that they want their cloud service providers to interconnect and share workloads. Many organisations don’t have the processes or resources in place to manage multiple clouds and will therefore start looking to interconnection and multi-cloud access as a means to bring various silos of computing together to be more agile, as traditional methods can be timely and expensive.”
“An interconnection-first cloud strategy allows cloud service providers and businesses to come together and connect in many locations in a variety of ways. Businesses can therefore orchestrate hybrid and multi-cloud solutions across multiple locations and gain the global scale, performance and security they need to compete.”
When it comes to spending, there was a broad spread of budget allocation for cloud computing. One in five (21%) spend less than 5% of their current IT budget on cloud, while 18% spends 6-10% of the budget. One in 10 spends 11-15%, while just less (9%) spends 16-20% of their IT budget on cloud. Interestingly 8% spends 41-50% and the same spends more than 50%.
Spend intentions
Respondents were also asked about their expected spend on cloud technologies over the next 12 months, where a clear trend emerged. More than half (54%) said spending will increase, while more than a third (37%) said it was a possibility, with just 9% saying it would not.
Cloud service provider selection is obviously an important issue in light of the rate of adoption, and when asked for their top three respondents tied three by average score. Security, cost and reliability were some margin ahead of data location, accessibility and ease of use. By first preferences, the results remain the same.
While there are no surprises here, it is interesting to take these results in light of the reputation question. Respondents were asked, in their opinion, who was the most trusted cloud service provider. A clear half said Microsoft Azure/Office 365, followed by almost a quarter (23%) saying Amazon Web Services. Some way below that was Google Cloud Platform (7%) and IBM Softlayer and Salesforce.com tied on 4%, followed by Oracle on 3%.
From this perspective, it would appear that Microsoft’s Azure and Office 365 is winning the battle in the cloud market to be seen as the most secure, reliable cloud platform. Having done much to woo government and public services, Redmond’s declared commitment to be General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant across its cloud services by the enforcement deadline of 25 May 2018, has no doubt added to its reputation. This may also indicate a perception that both Amazon and Google’s offerings are still a little to open and unregulated to be seen as safe options for enterprise.
“Enterprises like to work with cloud service providers that they can trust,” commented Mortell. “At Equinix, we ensure that our customers are connecting with the most trusted global cloud service providers on the planet. We are happy to see that Microsoft was ranked as the most trusted CSP in Ireland, as it was the first cloud service provider available on Equinix Cloud Exchange in Ireland for direct connectivity to its Azure and Office 365 cloud solutions.”
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