Skip to main content

Hybrid IT Usage Doubles

Companies prefer a mix of on-prem and cloud environments, according to the 2024 Global State of IT Automation Report from Stonebranch. In only one year, hybrid IT usage has doubled from 34% to 68%.

Organizations are deciding where to store data — either on-prem or cloud — on a case-by-case basis. This approach is efficient and flexible but poses a challenge when it comes to automating and orchestrating these environments.


Source: Stonebranch

Other key automation trends from the report include:

Automation is Evolving into Orchestration

Driven by a desire to orchestrate across complex hybrid IT environments, 82% of respondents plan to replace legacy IT automation tools or add new automation tools to the mix.

Democratization of Automation Continues to Grow

88% of respondents enable end-users across the business with self-service access to IT automation. Those who plan to add or replace IT automation tools with a more modern solution cited a desire to add self-service as the leading reason for change.

Machine Learning Pipelines are Evolving and Growing in Importance

A significant 74% of respondents have already incorporated data and ML pipelines to operationalize their AI-driven initiatives. This is an indicator of many companies' strong commitment to the pivotal role of AI in shaping their future success.

Peter Baljet, Stonebranch CTO, concludes, "Our findings show that companies are adapting their IT automation and orchestration strategies to meet the specific challenges that come with cloud technologies. In the complex world of today's hybrid IT environments, automation is crucial to enhance performance, secure systems, and control costs."

Methodology: The report is based on a survey of IT automation professionals and executives, conducted by Censuswide between January 24 – February 5, 2024.

The Latest

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

Hybrid IT Usage Doubles

Companies prefer a mix of on-prem and cloud environments, according to the 2024 Global State of IT Automation Report from Stonebranch. In only one year, hybrid IT usage has doubled from 34% to 68%.

Organizations are deciding where to store data — either on-prem or cloud — on a case-by-case basis. This approach is efficient and flexible but poses a challenge when it comes to automating and orchestrating these environments.


Source: Stonebranch

Other key automation trends from the report include:

Automation is Evolving into Orchestration

Driven by a desire to orchestrate across complex hybrid IT environments, 82% of respondents plan to replace legacy IT automation tools or add new automation tools to the mix.

Democratization of Automation Continues to Grow

88% of respondents enable end-users across the business with self-service access to IT automation. Those who plan to add or replace IT automation tools with a more modern solution cited a desire to add self-service as the leading reason for change.

Machine Learning Pipelines are Evolving and Growing in Importance

A significant 74% of respondents have already incorporated data and ML pipelines to operationalize their AI-driven initiatives. This is an indicator of many companies' strong commitment to the pivotal role of AI in shaping their future success.

Peter Baljet, Stonebranch CTO, concludes, "Our findings show that companies are adapting their IT automation and orchestration strategies to meet the specific challenges that come with cloud technologies. In the complex world of today's hybrid IT environments, automation is crucial to enhance performance, secure systems, and control costs."

Methodology: The report is based on a survey of IT automation professionals and executives, conducted by Censuswide between January 24 – February 5, 2024.

The Latest

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...