Cloud Barriers Impact the Bottom Line

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.

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Cloud Barriers Impact the Bottom Line

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.

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Beyond Traditional Autoscaling: The Future of Kubernetes in AI Infrastructure

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI Drives Surge in Data Budgets

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Misaligned Architecture Causes Service Disruptions, High Operational Costs and Security Challenges

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

How GenAI Can Save Time for the NetOps Team

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

Will AI Solve the Growing Data Divide?

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

Top Concerns for Tech Decision Makers

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

Gartner: Top Trends Shaping the Future of Cloud

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2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

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