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Hybrid Management is Key Challenge

Hybrid IT is becoming a standard enterprise model, but there’s no single playbook to get there, according to a new report by Dimension Data entitled The Success Factors for Managing Hybrid IT.

Looking at the top motivators to move to hybrid IT by country, Hong Kong, UK and US companies highlighted end-user demand most often, while respondents in France, Singapore and South Africa most often noted cost. Malaysian firms listed hiring challenges, and German firms mentioned limited data center capacity as the most common motivating factors.

The report also shows that management of the hybrid IT environment (41 percent of respondents) is one of the top three challenges in deployment.

Dimension Data Group CEO, Jason Goodall said: “With data and processes shifting across multiple cloud and non-cloud environments, a new approach to management is called for. IT managers are under tremendous pressure to seek new ways to manage and secure multiple IT environments in an effective manner. Automation is important because it helps reduce the operating costs, as well as the pain caused by the growing complexity of business processes and management tasks. It is simply no longer appropriate or cost-effective for these tasks to be done manually.”

Data migration was another common deployment challenge, with 44 percent of the respondents saying they found it challenging to determine which option is the best for a particular workload and to migrate workloads to new locations.

While 38 percent of enterprises surveyed claimed that they use automation to accelerate application migration, 48 percent said that migration at their company is manual and labor-intensive or that they use in-house resources. Today’s application and data migration remains complex and expensive for most organizations.

According to Kelly Morgan, Research VP, Services at 451 Research, managed services have become a key component of service delivery across a range of infrastructure and application products.

“Service providers that can offer a comprehensive portfolio of managed services across the broadest set of infrastructure options are well positioned to meet the full set of enterprise cloud requirements,” said Morgan.

Other highlights in the report include:

■ Despite concerns about security, compliance, and integration issues, organizations are embracing next-generation networking technologies such as SDN and network functions virtualization.

■ Enterprises are using innovative/emerging technologies such as containers, big data solutions and software-defined networking (SDN) in productions scenarios.

■ Enterprises are spending a significant portion of their IT budgets with third-party service providers on managed and professional services for various reasons – to lower cost, to free IT staff to focus on other projects, to improve security, and to provide specialized technical expertise. The research reveals that 41 percent of organizations work with multiple vendors and manage them themselves, and another 37 percent work with a single vendor that can offer a broad range of products and services which it builds and manages.

The research involved 1,500 IT decision makers from multiple vertical industries across the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South Africa.

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Hybrid Management is Key Challenge

Hybrid IT is becoming a standard enterprise model, but there’s no single playbook to get there, according to a new report by Dimension Data entitled The Success Factors for Managing Hybrid IT.

Looking at the top motivators to move to hybrid IT by country, Hong Kong, UK and US companies highlighted end-user demand most often, while respondents in France, Singapore and South Africa most often noted cost. Malaysian firms listed hiring challenges, and German firms mentioned limited data center capacity as the most common motivating factors.

The report also shows that management of the hybrid IT environment (41 percent of respondents) is one of the top three challenges in deployment.

Dimension Data Group CEO, Jason Goodall said: “With data and processes shifting across multiple cloud and non-cloud environments, a new approach to management is called for. IT managers are under tremendous pressure to seek new ways to manage and secure multiple IT environments in an effective manner. Automation is important because it helps reduce the operating costs, as well as the pain caused by the growing complexity of business processes and management tasks. It is simply no longer appropriate or cost-effective for these tasks to be done manually.”

Data migration was another common deployment challenge, with 44 percent of the respondents saying they found it challenging to determine which option is the best for a particular workload and to migrate workloads to new locations.

While 38 percent of enterprises surveyed claimed that they use automation to accelerate application migration, 48 percent said that migration at their company is manual and labor-intensive or that they use in-house resources. Today’s application and data migration remains complex and expensive for most organizations.

According to Kelly Morgan, Research VP, Services at 451 Research, managed services have become a key component of service delivery across a range of infrastructure and application products.

“Service providers that can offer a comprehensive portfolio of managed services across the broadest set of infrastructure options are well positioned to meet the full set of enterprise cloud requirements,” said Morgan.

Other highlights in the report include:

■ Despite concerns about security, compliance, and integration issues, organizations are embracing next-generation networking technologies such as SDN and network functions virtualization.

■ Enterprises are using innovative/emerging technologies such as containers, big data solutions and software-defined networking (SDN) in productions scenarios.

■ Enterprises are spending a significant portion of their IT budgets with third-party service providers on managed and professional services for various reasons – to lower cost, to free IT staff to focus on other projects, to improve security, and to provide specialized technical expertise. The research reveals that 41 percent of organizations work with multiple vendors and manage them themselves, and another 37 percent work with a single vendor that can offer a broad range of products and services which it builds and manages.

The research involved 1,500 IT decision makers from multiple vertical industries across the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South Africa.

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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...