While most companies are now deploying cloud-based technologies, the 2024 Secure Cloud Networking Field Report from Aviatrix found that there is a silent struggle to maximize value from those investments. Many of the challenges organizations have faced over the past several years have evolved, but continue today.
Among the key findings:
Cost and visibility are top barriers
Cost and visibility are the top barriers to cloud. Respondents report that "cost controls" and "visibility and troubleshooting" (both 45%) are the biggest hurdles to their organization taking full advantage of cloud (i.e. where they are burning the most man-hours ).
Human error is top cause of cloud outages
Legacy approaches and lagging skill sets are causes for cloud security concern. More cloud network outages were caused by firewalls (31.2%) than cyberattacks (15.3%) in the past year. In addition, human error caused 47.1% of outages.
AI is impacting cloud budgets
Unrealistic cloud budgets are resulting in cost overruns and concern about the implementation of generative AI (GenAI) initiatives. 30.2% report their organization's AI initiatives have increased planned investment in cloud. But another 38.4% report AI initiatives have not impacted cloud budgets (25.8%) or even decreased them (12.6%).
Cloud skills gap remains strong
62.6% report their company has struggled to hire the necessary candidates to support cloud initiatives within their organization. 65.7% of respondents reported that they have struggled to find educational resources for learning about high-demand skills such as multicloud network architecture and design.
"Cloud networking and network security have been thought of as utilities – essentials like electricity that enterprises rely on to run their business and just expect to work," said Chris McHenry, Vice President of Product Management at Aviatrix. "But as we've seen from the practitioners behind the infrastructure, there's still a of complexity in the cloud that is ultimately impacting businesses' bottom lines."
Methodology: The survey included more than 400 global respondents spanning security, cloud, networking roles, with several reporting they hold more than one of these roles at their organization. More than 50% of the respondents were from enterprise organizations with more than 2,000 employees.