Multiple Cloud Automation Solutions Create Operational Challenges

Learn more about Broadcom

A large majority of organizations employ more than one cloud automation solution, and this practice creates significant challenges that are resulting in delays and added costs for businesses, according to Why companies lose efficiency and compliance with cloud automation solutions from Broadcom. Not surprisingly, the research also found the majority of companies have consolidation efforts underway, a trend that has nurtured an important emerging role in the IT organization, that of Cloud Architect.

"The modern IT organization is highly complex with multiple cloud platforms, environments, and cloud automation solutions.These 'islands of automation' have become a big challenge," said Aline Gerew, Head of Automation Agile Operations Division, Broadcom. "These survey findings demonstrate a growing need to abstract the complexity from hybrid cloud automation processes and provide a single view of all automation processes."

Chaos in the Cloud

As businesses' reliance on cloud has increased, so has the need for various cloud automation tools to help manage cloud workloads. And with many companies utilizing several cloud platforms, it's not surprising they also use multiple automation tools. In fact, 81% of companies use more than one cloud automation solution, many of which are cloud native. These tools are also deployed in numerous environments — public clouds, on-premises, and SaaS based solutions, which makes coordinated automation a challenge.

70% of those surveyed reported that using multiple cloud automation tools has created significant challenges. Among the biggest issues are:

■ increasing the time to automate (59%)

■ time to report (52%)

■ time to remediate automation problems (52%)

Nearly half of respondents indicated compliance is more difficult. Using multiple automation solutions also adds costs, makes trouble shooting more difficult, and delays delivery.

Consolidation Is Complex

Given the many challenges of using multiple cloud automation solutions, it is not surprising that 78% of respondents' companies have consolidation plans underway. However, the process is not simple and requires careful planning to ensure the remaining cloud automation tools can support multiple different environments.

Additionally, companies continue to utilize various approaches when moving existing application functionality to the cloud including:

■ SaaS (57%)

■ lift and shift (56%)

■ cloud native replacements (46%)

■ refactoring (41%).

These diverse platform and functionality needs drive a long list of requirements for cloud automation tool selection with 62% citing operational costs as the most important factor followed by performance (53%), and operational efficiency (49%). Other criteria include supported environments, ease of use, and advanced features such as dashboards, analytics, and SLAs.

Rise of the Cloud Architect

An interesting outcome of the trend toward consolidation is the growing role of the Cloud Architect. This role is tasked with addressing the challenges of too many cloud automation tools and leading the work to find a single solution that meets the diverse platform and functional needs of the organization. The survey found 67% of companies currently have a cloud architect on staff with another 33% planning to hire one. The Cloud Architect has broad reach, influencing numerous automation projects across various teams within the organization including IT, development, and security.

Methodology: IT, cloud and deployment professionals at companies of all sizes representing all seniority levels were invited to participate in a survey on their company's cloud automation practices. The survey was administered electronically by a third party, and participants were offered a token compensation for their participation. A total of 535 qualified participants from five continents completed the global survey.

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Multiple Cloud Automation Solutions Create Operational Challenges

Learn more about Broadcom

A large majority of organizations employ more than one cloud automation solution, and this practice creates significant challenges that are resulting in delays and added costs for businesses, according to Why companies lose efficiency and compliance with cloud automation solutions from Broadcom. Not surprisingly, the research also found the majority of companies have consolidation efforts underway, a trend that has nurtured an important emerging role in the IT organization, that of Cloud Architect.

"The modern IT organization is highly complex with multiple cloud platforms, environments, and cloud automation solutions.These 'islands of automation' have become a big challenge," said Aline Gerew, Head of Automation Agile Operations Division, Broadcom. "These survey findings demonstrate a growing need to abstract the complexity from hybrid cloud automation processes and provide a single view of all automation processes."

Chaos in the Cloud

As businesses' reliance on cloud has increased, so has the need for various cloud automation tools to help manage cloud workloads. And with many companies utilizing several cloud platforms, it's not surprising they also use multiple automation tools. In fact, 81% of companies use more than one cloud automation solution, many of which are cloud native. These tools are also deployed in numerous environments — public clouds, on-premises, and SaaS based solutions, which makes coordinated automation a challenge.

70% of those surveyed reported that using multiple cloud automation tools has created significant challenges. Among the biggest issues are:

■ increasing the time to automate (59%)

■ time to report (52%)

■ time to remediate automation problems (52%)

Nearly half of respondents indicated compliance is more difficult. Using multiple automation solutions also adds costs, makes trouble shooting more difficult, and delays delivery.

Consolidation Is Complex

Given the many challenges of using multiple cloud automation solutions, it is not surprising that 78% of respondents' companies have consolidation plans underway. However, the process is not simple and requires careful planning to ensure the remaining cloud automation tools can support multiple different environments.

Additionally, companies continue to utilize various approaches when moving existing application functionality to the cloud including:

■ SaaS (57%)

■ lift and shift (56%)

■ cloud native replacements (46%)

■ refactoring (41%).

These diverse platform and functionality needs drive a long list of requirements for cloud automation tool selection with 62% citing operational costs as the most important factor followed by performance (53%), and operational efficiency (49%). Other criteria include supported environments, ease of use, and advanced features such as dashboards, analytics, and SLAs.

Rise of the Cloud Architect

An interesting outcome of the trend toward consolidation is the growing role of the Cloud Architect. This role is tasked with addressing the challenges of too many cloud automation tools and leading the work to find a single solution that meets the diverse platform and functional needs of the organization. The survey found 67% of companies currently have a cloud architect on staff with another 33% planning to hire one. The Cloud Architect has broad reach, influencing numerous automation projects across various teams within the organization including IT, development, and security.

Methodology: IT, cloud and deployment professionals at companies of all sizes representing all seniority levels were invited to participate in a survey on their company's cloud automation practices. The survey was administered electronically by a third party, and participants were offered a token compensation for their participation. A total of 535 qualified participants from five continents completed the global survey.

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The Quiet Power of Milliseconds in High Traffic Systems

One of the earliest lessons I learned from architecting throughput-heavy services is that simplicity wins repeatedly: fewer moving parts, loosely coupled execution (fewer synchronous calls), and precise timing metering. You want data and decisions to travel the shortest possible path. The goal is to build a system where every strategy and each line of code (contention is the key metric) complements the decision trees ...

Are AI "Autonomous Coworkers" Ready for Payroll?

As discussions around AI "autonomous coworkers" accelerate, many industry projections assume that agents will soon operate alongside human staff in making decisions, taking actions, and managing tasks with minimal oversight. But a growing number of critics (including some of the developers building these systems) argue that the industry still has a long way to go to be able to treat AI agents like fully trusted teammates ...

Enterprise AI Reaches Pivotal Inflection Point: From Automation to Agentic Intelligence

Enterprise AI has entered a transformational phase where, according to Digitate's recently released survey, Agentic AI and the Future of Enterprise IT, companies are moving beyond traditional automation toward Agentic AI systems designed to reason, adapt, and collaborate alongside human teams ...

The Real Reason Enterprise AI Stalls: It Doesn't Fit in the Box

The numbers back this urgency up. A recent Zapier survey shows that 92% of enterprises now treat AI as a top priority. Leaders want it, and teams are clamoring for it. But if you look closer at the operations of these companies, you see a different picture. The rollout is slow. The results are often delayed. There's a disconnect between what leaders want and what their technical infrastructure can handle ...

AI's Inflection Point Will Redefine Enterprise Readiness in 2026

Kyndryl's 2025 Readiness Report revealed that 61% of global business and technology leaders report increasing pressure from boards and regulators to prove AI's ROI. As the technology evolves and expectations continue to rise, leaders are compelled to generate and prove impact before scaling further. This will lead to a decisive turning point in 2026 ...

Turning Foresight into Resilience: Reclaiming Prevention in the Age of Exposure

Cloudflare's disruption illustrates how quickly a single provider's issue cascades into widespread exposure. Many organizations don't fully realize how tightly their systems are coupled to thirdparty services, or how quickly availability and security concerns align when those services falter ... You can't avoid these dependencies, but you can understand them ...

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If you work with AI, you know this story. A model performs during testing, looks great in early reviews, works perfectly in production and then slowly loses relevance after operating for a while. Everything on the surface looks perfect — pipelines are running, predictions or recommendations are error-free, data quality checks show green; yet outcomes don't meet the ground reality. This pattern often repeats across enterprise AI programs. Take for example, a mid-sized retail banking and wealth-management firm with heavy investments in AI-powered risk analytics, fraud detection and personalized credit-decisioning systems. The model worked well for a while, but transactions increased, so did false positives by 18% ...

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Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...

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