Cloud Computing and Hybrid IT: Evolving Norms - Part 1

Leon Adato
Learn more about SolarWinds

The cloud and hybrid IT are a reality for the majority of organizations today, unlike just a few years ago when they were limited to early adopters. Today, we are in a new era in regards to how we work and how compute workloads are processed—one that is more global, interconnected, and flexible than ever — and organizations of all sizes are implementing cloud computing to better meet the demands of a modernized workforce. At the same time, the benefits of the cloud and hybrid IT introduce greater complexity and technology abstraction, and IT professionals are tasked with devising new and creative methods to monitor and manage this infrastructure in order to deliver the Quality of Service (QoS) end-users expect. All of this means hybrid IT can look drastically different from one organization to another; however, there are overarching trends worth exploring that paint a portrait of a modern hybrid IT organization.

To more closely examine the variety of ways in which IT departments and professionals around the world are evolving with the integration of cloud services, and the overall effect hybrid IT is having on their organizations and IT job roles, SolarWinds recently released the SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2017: Portrait of a Hybrid Organization. This annual study consists of survey-based research that explores significant trends, developments, and movements related to and directly affecting IT professionals.

The findings are based on a survey fielded in December 2016 that yielded responses from 205 IT practitioners, managers, and directors in the U.S. and Canada, from public and private sector small, mid-size, and enterprise companies whose organizations are leveraging cloud-based services for at least some IT infrastructure. The results help illustrate what a modern hybrid IT organization looks like — notably, they are realizing the cost benefits of the cloud, but continue to struggle with shifting job and skill dynamics.

Overall, the 2017 key findings show that today’s hybrid IT organizations are:

1. Moving applications, storage, and databases further into the cloud

■ In the past 12 months, IT professionals have migrated applications (74 percent), storage (50 percent), and databases (35 percent) to the cloud more than any other areas of IT

■ By weighted rank, the top three reasons for prioritizing these areas of their IT environments for migration were greatest potential for ROI/cost efficiency, availability, and elastic scalability, respectively

■ More than half (56 percent) said cost efficiency is one of their top three reasons for selecting the particular areas they have migrated to the cloud

2. Experiencing the cost efficiencies of the cloud

■ Nearly all (95 percent) organizations have migrated critical applications and IT infrastructure to the cloud over the past year, yet over two-thirds (69 percent) spend less than 40 percent of their annual IT budgets on cloud technology

■ Nearly half (45 percent) of organizations spend 70 percent or more of their annual IT budgets on on-premises (traditional) applications and infrastructure

■ Nearly 3 in 5 (59 percent) organizations have received either most or all expected cloud benefits (i.e., cost efficiency, availability, and scalability)

■ Cost efficiency is at times not enough to justify migration to the cloud: 35 percent migrated areas to the cloud that were ultimately brought back on-premises, mostly due to security/compliance issues and poor performance

3. Building and expanding cloud roles and skillsets for IT professionals

■ Over three-fifths (62 percent) of IT professionals indicated that hybrid IT has required them to acquire new skills, while 11 percent said it has altered their career path

■ Nearly three-fifths (57 percent) of organizations have already hired/reassigned IT personnel, or plan to do so, for the specific purpose of managing cloud technologies

■ The top cloud-related skill IT professionals improved over the past 12 months was monitoring/management tools and metrics (38 percent)

■ 63 percent said an IT staff skills gap was one of the five biggest hybrid IT challenges, while 46 percent said increased workload/responsibilities

■ Nearly half (46 percent) do not believe that IT professionals entering the workforce now possess the skills necessary to manage hybrid IT environments

4. Increasing in complexity and lacking visibility across the entire hybrid IT infrastructure

■ 7 out of 10 (69 percent) said their organizations currently use up to three cloud provider environments, with the largest percentage using two to three; however, one out of every 10 (9 percent) uses 10 or more

■ By weighted rank, the number one challenge created by hybrid IT is increased infrastructure complexity, followed by lack of control/visibility into the performance of cloud-based applications and infrastructure

Read Cloud Computing and Hybrid IT: Evolving Norms - Part 2, offering some recommendations for success in the hybrid IT era .

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Cloud Computing and Hybrid IT: Evolving Norms - Part 1

Leon Adato
Learn more about SolarWinds

The cloud and hybrid IT are a reality for the majority of organizations today, unlike just a few years ago when they were limited to early adopters. Today, we are in a new era in regards to how we work and how compute workloads are processed—one that is more global, interconnected, and flexible than ever — and organizations of all sizes are implementing cloud computing to better meet the demands of a modernized workforce. At the same time, the benefits of the cloud and hybrid IT introduce greater complexity and technology abstraction, and IT professionals are tasked with devising new and creative methods to monitor and manage this infrastructure in order to deliver the Quality of Service (QoS) end-users expect. All of this means hybrid IT can look drastically different from one organization to another; however, there are overarching trends worth exploring that paint a portrait of a modern hybrid IT organization.

To more closely examine the variety of ways in which IT departments and professionals around the world are evolving with the integration of cloud services, and the overall effect hybrid IT is having on their organizations and IT job roles, SolarWinds recently released the SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2017: Portrait of a Hybrid Organization. This annual study consists of survey-based research that explores significant trends, developments, and movements related to and directly affecting IT professionals.

The findings are based on a survey fielded in December 2016 that yielded responses from 205 IT practitioners, managers, and directors in the U.S. and Canada, from public and private sector small, mid-size, and enterprise companies whose organizations are leveraging cloud-based services for at least some IT infrastructure. The results help illustrate what a modern hybrid IT organization looks like — notably, they are realizing the cost benefits of the cloud, but continue to struggle with shifting job and skill dynamics.

Overall, the 2017 key findings show that today’s hybrid IT organizations are:

1. Moving applications, storage, and databases further into the cloud

■ In the past 12 months, IT professionals have migrated applications (74 percent), storage (50 percent), and databases (35 percent) to the cloud more than any other areas of IT

■ By weighted rank, the top three reasons for prioritizing these areas of their IT environments for migration were greatest potential for ROI/cost efficiency, availability, and elastic scalability, respectively

■ More than half (56 percent) said cost efficiency is one of their top three reasons for selecting the particular areas they have migrated to the cloud

2. Experiencing the cost efficiencies of the cloud

■ Nearly all (95 percent) organizations have migrated critical applications and IT infrastructure to the cloud over the past year, yet over two-thirds (69 percent) spend less than 40 percent of their annual IT budgets on cloud technology

■ Nearly half (45 percent) of organizations spend 70 percent or more of their annual IT budgets on on-premises (traditional) applications and infrastructure

■ Nearly 3 in 5 (59 percent) organizations have received either most or all expected cloud benefits (i.e., cost efficiency, availability, and scalability)

■ Cost efficiency is at times not enough to justify migration to the cloud: 35 percent migrated areas to the cloud that were ultimately brought back on-premises, mostly due to security/compliance issues and poor performance

3. Building and expanding cloud roles and skillsets for IT professionals

■ Over three-fifths (62 percent) of IT professionals indicated that hybrid IT has required them to acquire new skills, while 11 percent said it has altered their career path

■ Nearly three-fifths (57 percent) of organizations have already hired/reassigned IT personnel, or plan to do so, for the specific purpose of managing cloud technologies

■ The top cloud-related skill IT professionals improved over the past 12 months was monitoring/management tools and metrics (38 percent)

■ 63 percent said an IT staff skills gap was one of the five biggest hybrid IT challenges, while 46 percent said increased workload/responsibilities

■ Nearly half (46 percent) do not believe that IT professionals entering the workforce now possess the skills necessary to manage hybrid IT environments

4. Increasing in complexity and lacking visibility across the entire hybrid IT infrastructure

■ 7 out of 10 (69 percent) said their organizations currently use up to three cloud provider environments, with the largest percentage using two to three; however, one out of every 10 (9 percent) uses 10 or more

■ By weighted rank, the number one challenge created by hybrid IT is increased infrastructure complexity, followed by lack of control/visibility into the performance of cloud-based applications and infrastructure

Read Cloud Computing and Hybrid IT: Evolving Norms - Part 2, offering some recommendations for success in the hybrid IT era .

Related Links

Hot Topics

Related Vendors

The Latest

Escaping Pilot Purgatory: How AI Becomes an Operational Advantage

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Closing the Gap in Modern Tech and the Tools Meant to Monitor Them

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

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Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Clearing the Path to AI: Why Vendor Consolidation Matters Now

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

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Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

Observability at a Crossroads: AI, Economics, Complexity and the Enduring Power of Open Source

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

Explainability Is the New Battleground in AI-Powered Observability

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

Empowering the Human Side of the Autonomous IT Age

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...

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AI workloads require an enormous amount of computing power ... What's also becoming abundantly clear is just how quickly AI's computing needs are leading to enterprise systems failure. According to Cockroach Labs' State of AI Infrastructure 2026 report, enterprise systems are much closer to failure than their organizations realize. The report ... suggests AI scale could cause widespread failures in as little as one year — making it a clear risk for business performance and reliability.