Reaping the Benefits of Cloud Begins with Facing the Realities of Implementation
May 12, 2022

Alastair Pooley
Snow Software

Share this

The flexibility and ease of deployment of cloud technology demonstrated its worth during the pandemic. Gartner expects global spending on cloud services will reach over $482 billion in 2022, up from $313 billion in 2020. With no end to its growth trajectory in sight, it's now time to review the current state of cloud infrastructure within the enterprise — how effective it has been and what else could be done to drive up its value.

A survey from Snow Software polled more than 500 IT leaders in the US and UK to determine the current state of cloud infrastructure. Nearly half of the IT leaders who responded agreed that cloud was critical to operations during the pandemic with the majority deploying a hybrid cloud strategy consisting of both public and private clouds. Unsurprisingly, over the last 12 months, the majority of respondents had increased overall cloud spend — a substantial increase over the 2020 findings.


Meanwhile, many IT leaders believe they will have to add to cloud services to support demand as hybrid working becomes the norm. This figure was significantly higher in the US compared to the UK.


Additionally, IT leaders plan to move less workloads to private cloud in 2021 compared to last year. In 2020, a fifth said they were bringing cloud workloads back on-premises whereas this year only three percent of US IT leaders and less than one percent of UK IT leaders plan to move workloads to private cloud.


When asked about the main reasons for relying on cloud computing, scalability and flexibility was cited by many of organizations, with another solid group of IT executives stating it is the best environment to develop, test and launch products and services.

However, many of them have found that they are now experiencing an array of cloud and infrastructure management challenges from cybersecurity threats to skill gaps.

Issues Arising

One area where this is particularly apparent is cybersecurity. Approximately one-third of IT leaders felt that mounting cybersecurity threats are their greatest infrastructure management challenge. This highlights that while the majority believe security is a core driver for cloud adoption, it is also a key concern for many IT departments who are not equipped with the right staff/skillset to adapt their security approach accordingly.

Additional challenges cited include lack of integration between new and old infrastructure technologies, meeting governance and compliance requirements and managing spend. Perhaps unsurprisingly, mitigating concerns about cybersecurity protections is at the top of IT leaders' list of cloud management challenges they'd wish to solve in the blink of an eye — along with a lack of skilled IT staff and lack of cloud standardization.


Cloud Brings Questions as Well as Answers

The acceleration of cloud infrastructure over the last year has caused some management challenges for organizations. Only a fraction of IT managers, and IT directors, rated themselves as experts in Cloud technology — highlighting that greater education is needed for mid-level executives for them to manage cloud infrastructure effectively.

These figures become even more worrying when it comes to managing spend. While the majority of respondents claimed leadership is familiar with cloud investment, a significant minority say leadership gets updates but do not question spend. Although there is no need for leadership to get involved if cloud spend is within budget, it has been found that cloud investments can sometimes bring unexpected (and expensive) costs. At that stage, leadership will jump in to understand the budget demands, but this can be tricky if they haven't previously been engaged.

Cloud investments are showing no sign of slowing down, and while the benefits cannot be denied, without the necessary training, education, and visibility to effectively implement and manage cloud, organizations could be limiting their ROI.

Alastair Pooley is CIO of Snow Software
Share this

The Latest

March 18, 2024

Gartner has highlighted the top trends that will impact technology providers in 2024: Generative AI (GenAI) is dominating the technical and product agenda of nearly every tech provider ...

March 15, 2024

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 4 - Part 1, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) discusses artificial intelligence and network management ...

March 14, 2024

The integration and maintenance of AI-enabled Software as a Service (SaaS) applications have emerged as pivotal points in enterprise AI implementation strategies, offering both significant challenges and promising benefits. Despite the enthusiasm surrounding AI's potential impact, the reality of its implementation presents hurdles. Currently, over 90% of enterprises are grappling with limitations in integrating AI into their tech stack ...

March 13, 2024

In the intricate landscape of IT infrastructure, one critical component often relegated to the back burner is Active Directory (AD) forest recovery — an oversight with costly consequences ...

March 12, 2024

eBPF is a technology that allows users to run custom programs inside the Linux kernel, which changes the behavior of the kernel and makes execution up to 10x faster(link is external) and more efficient for key parts of what makes our computing lives work. That includes observability, networking and security ...

March 11, 2024

Data mesh, an increasingly important decentralized approach to data architecture and organizational design, focuses on treating data as a product, emphasizing domain-oriented data ownership, self-service tools and federated governance. The 2024 State of the Data Lakehouse report from Dremio presents evidence of the growing adoption of data mesh architectures in enterprises ... The report highlights that the drive towards data mesh is increasingly becoming a business strategy to enhance agility and speed in problem-solving and innovation ...

March 07, 2024
In this digital era, consumers prefer a seamless user experience, and here, the significance of performance testing cannot be overstated. Application performance testing is essential in ensuring that your software products, websites, or other related systems operate seamlessly under varying conditions. However, the cost of poor performance extends beyond technical glitches and slow load times; it can directly affect customer satisfaction and brand reputation. Understand the tangible and intangible consequences of poor application performance and how it can affect your business ...
March 06, 2024

Too much traffic can crash a website ... That stampede of traffic is even more horrifying when it's part of a malicious denial of service attack ... These attacks are becoming more common, more sophisticated and increasingly tied to ransomware-style demands. So it's no wonder that the threat of DDoS remains one of the many things that keep IT and marketing leaders up at night ...

March 05, 2024

Today, applications serve as the backbone of businesses, and therefore, ensuring optimal performance has never been more critical. This is where application performance monitoring (APM) emerges as an indispensable tool, empowering organizations to safeguard their applications proactively, match user expectations, and drive growth. But APM is not without its challenges. Choosing to implement APM is a path that's not easily realized, even if it offers great benefits. This blog deals with the potential hurdles that may manifest when you actualize your APM strategy in your IT application environment ...

March 04, 2024

This year's Super Bowl drew in viewership of nearly 124 million viewers and made history as the most-watched live broadcast event since the 1969 moon landing. To support this spike in viewership, streaming companies like YouTube TV, Hulu and Paramount+ began preparing their IT infrastructure months in advance to ensure an exceptional viewer experience without outages or major interruptions. New Relic conducted a survey to understand the importance of a seamless viewing experience and the impact of outages during major streaming events such as the Super Bowl ...