Enterprise readiness for multi-cloud adoption is low across Europe, suggests IDC research
IDC suggests multi-cloud adoption will become the norm across European enterprises, but there is much work to be done before this becomes a reality
UK businesses appear to be more open to the idea of shifting applications and workloads between cloud providers than their European counterparts, suggests research from analyst house IDC.
The market watcher polled 600 business executives and IT leaders working across 15 industries and nine European countries – including the UK – to assess their readiness to adopt a multi-cloud IT consumption model.
The results suggest low levels of enterprise readiness when it comes to adopting a multi-cloud strategy, with just 9% of the European respondents classified as prepared, while around 80% claim still to be working out their hybrid cloud strategies.
In line with this, just over a third (34%) of respondents said they have no plans to move their applications and workloads from their current cloud provider setup in the next 12 months, whereas the UK cut of the figures revealed 29% of respondents are plotting such a move.
Michael Ceroici, research analyst for European multi-cloud Infrastructure at IDC, said the company’s findings seem to suggest a high level of uncertainty within enterprises about how best to pursue a mix and match strategy to sourcing and consuming cloud services from multiple providers.
“While the perception of multi-cloud infrastructure as an end goal certainly resonates with European organisations, there remains uncertainty over what a multi-cloud strategy looks like and how this strategy should be disseminated in an organisation,” said Ceroici.
“Elements from infrastructure technology, aligning cloud vision between different business lines and internal cloud expertise all play a part in facilitating successful multi-cloud endeavours.”
Read more about multi-cloud
- Deploying a cloud management platform can make adopting a multi-cloud approach to consuming IT resources easier, but choosing one that is the right fit for your enterprise can be a challenge for CIOs.
- While IT providers are fond of suggesting moving workloads between clouds is as easy as dragging and dropping apps between environments, the reality can be far more complex.
Following on from this point, Giorgio Nebuloni, research director for European multi-cloud Infrastructure at IDC, said there are a few areas where enterprises can start to lay the groundwork now to start preparing for a move to a multi-cloud setup.
For instance, they can start by identifying the best workloads to run where, and need to account for the fact that once this decision is made, the fast pace of technological change in the cloud market means they will have to constantly re-evaluate the suppliers they work with.
“Virtually all European enterprises will soon use multiple cloud services. The smart ones are already actively planning for those services to be benchmarked, price-compared and selected against each other based on the workload need,” said Nebuloni.
“To get there, a central point of control based on software and services are [potentially] needed, as are strategic approaches to skillsets, processes and datacentre infrastructure.”
