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Hybrid Cloud is Mainstream and Performance Management Software is Essential

Shamus McGillicuddy

Enterprises are aggressively deploying hybrid cloud infrastructure today, and the majority of them are deploying new network performance management software to support it.

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) recently published its biannual network management megatrends research report, Network Management Megatrends 2016: Managing Networks in the Era of the Internet of Things, Hybrid Clouds and Advanced Network Analytics. For this research we surveyed 150 North American enterprise network management professionals, and as the title makes obvious we asked them how they are impacted by hybrid clouds, among other megatrends.

Thirty-five percent (35%) of them said that their organizations have completed a production hybrid cloud deployment. Another 35% said they are in the process of deploying a hybrid cloud today and 15% said they plan to go into production within 12 months. EMA defined a hybrid cloud as a combination of internal, private cloud infrastructure and external, public cloud infrastructure, with orchestration and connectivity across the two.

Performance monitoring is a critical technology for enterprises that are deploying or operating hybrid clouds. We asked them to identify which networking technologies they are adopting to support these environments. The number one response was network virtualization overlays (e.g. VMware NSX). The second most popular response was network performance monitoring and management software (51%).

We also asked research participants to identify the networking challenges they are facing with hybrid cloud. The number one challenge (30%) was the complexity of provisioning interconnections between public and private cloud environments. However, several other challenges emerged as nearly as common. For instance, 26% said they lacked end-to-end, multi-site network visibility and troubleshooting, and 26% said they struggled with network latency between internal and external cloud resources. Finally, 23% said that their applications were not properly architected for hybrid cloud networks. These latter three challenges point to potential application performance problems. Enterprises who are implementing hybrid clouds will need to evaluate the readiness of their performance management to support these new cloud environments. Many of them also clearly need to evaluate their application architectures before they migrate.

EMA's 2016 network megatrends research explored a number of other interesting topics that IT professionals will find informative. For instance, we found that the vast majority of network management professionals are supporting an Internet of Things (IoT) initiative. The research explores the technologies they are adopting, the use cases they are pursuing, and the challenges they are facing with IoT.

Nearly half of enterprises are applying advanced analytics to network data. And more than half are outsourcing some aspects of network management to a managed services provider. Our research explores both of these trends in depth. It also examines enterprises' evolving requirements of network management products and the overall challenges to and benefits of network operations success.

To learn more about this research, attend EMA's free research highlights webinar and download the full report.

Shamus McGillicuddy is Senior Analyst, Network Management at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

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Hybrid Cloud is Mainstream and Performance Management Software is Essential

Shamus McGillicuddy

Enterprises are aggressively deploying hybrid cloud infrastructure today, and the majority of them are deploying new network performance management software to support it.

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) recently published its biannual network management megatrends research report, Network Management Megatrends 2016: Managing Networks in the Era of the Internet of Things, Hybrid Clouds and Advanced Network Analytics. For this research we surveyed 150 North American enterprise network management professionals, and as the title makes obvious we asked them how they are impacted by hybrid clouds, among other megatrends.

Thirty-five percent (35%) of them said that their organizations have completed a production hybrid cloud deployment. Another 35% said they are in the process of deploying a hybrid cloud today and 15% said they plan to go into production within 12 months. EMA defined a hybrid cloud as a combination of internal, private cloud infrastructure and external, public cloud infrastructure, with orchestration and connectivity across the two.

Performance monitoring is a critical technology for enterprises that are deploying or operating hybrid clouds. We asked them to identify which networking technologies they are adopting to support these environments. The number one response was network virtualization overlays (e.g. VMware NSX). The second most popular response was network performance monitoring and management software (51%).

We also asked research participants to identify the networking challenges they are facing with hybrid cloud. The number one challenge (30%) was the complexity of provisioning interconnections between public and private cloud environments. However, several other challenges emerged as nearly as common. For instance, 26% said they lacked end-to-end, multi-site network visibility and troubleshooting, and 26% said they struggled with network latency between internal and external cloud resources. Finally, 23% said that their applications were not properly architected for hybrid cloud networks. These latter three challenges point to potential application performance problems. Enterprises who are implementing hybrid clouds will need to evaluate the readiness of their performance management to support these new cloud environments. Many of them also clearly need to evaluate their application architectures before they migrate.

EMA's 2016 network megatrends research explored a number of other interesting topics that IT professionals will find informative. For instance, we found that the vast majority of network management professionals are supporting an Internet of Things (IoT) initiative. The research explores the technologies they are adopting, the use cases they are pursuing, and the challenges they are facing with IoT.

Nearly half of enterprises are applying advanced analytics to network data. And more than half are outsourcing some aspects of network management to a managed services provider. Our research explores both of these trends in depth. It also examines enterprises' evolving requirements of network management products and the overall challenges to and benefits of network operations success.

To learn more about this research, attend EMA's free research highlights webinar and download the full report.

Shamus McGillicuddy is Senior Analyst, Network Management at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

Hot Topics

The Latest

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

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 ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...