Organizations leveraging multi-cloud, cloud-native, and edge technologies to drive business growth and innovation: Study

Organizations are leveraging multi-cloud, cloud-native, and edge technologies to drive business growth and innovation, according to Turbonomic’s 2021 State of Multi-cloud Report. The report surveyed over 800 global IT professionals and examined the current state of multi-cloud adoption, its drivers, and the technologies enabling it, including containers, public cloud, and edge computing. The analysis was done with a particular lens on the motivations and behaviors of leading organizations versus their peers and finds notable shifts in priorities from the previous year, evidence that these organizations are progressing on their digital transformation journey.

Multi-cloud is Still About Leveraging the Right Apps and Services, but in 2021 Leaders Prioritize Business Leverage

Multi-cloud leaders aspire to leverage the right applications and services to differentiate their business. In the last three years of conducting the State of Multi-cloud survey, IT leaders have consistently cited the ability to leverage different application services as the primary driver of application workloads moving freely across clouds. However, this was the first year that leaders also indicated they value business leverage gained by avoiding lock-in over the benefits of any one cloud.

While only 30% of organizations are using three or more clouds, in the coming year advancing a multi-cloud strategy is the most important initiative for 21% of organizations, coming in second to optimizing existing cloud resources for performance and cost (25%). Transforming applications and operational models to effectively implement and realize the benefits of multi-cloud does not come without challenges. For the third year in a row, leading organizations cited culture and complexity as the top obstacle to achieving their goals.

Cloud-Native Operations Are Proving Difficult to Implement at Scale

Containers are the building blocks of the modern application and a key enabler of multi-cloud. Survey data found that for 61% of organizations containerization will play a strategic role within 18 months; it is already strategic for nearly 20% of organizations.

In fact, 56% are using at least one container platform today, 79% of which are using commercial Kubernetes—further evidence of containerization’s strategic role now and going forward. But, while 56% of those on their container/cloud journey are running containers in production, complexity at scale appears to be hindering advanced use cases.

“There is no doubt that containers are a strategic investment for customers today. Anyone building or re-architecting their applications to digitally transform is doing so with containers,” said Asena Hertz, Director of Product Marketing at Turbonomic. “But they create a lot of complexity for DevOps and Operations teams. Our survey finds that this complexity is getting in the way of organizations operating at scale. Continuous performance breeds confidence in the platform, allowing adoption to expand and innovation to thrive. That’s where Turbonomic comes in.”

Public Cloud Optimization and Advancing a Multi-cloud Strategy are This Year’s Top Initiatives

Survey results found that optimization (25%) is the most important initiative for organizations adopting public cloud in the coming year, followed by advancing a multi-cloud strategy (21%). These are challenges yet to be overcome. As organizations expand their use of public IaaS, they must find ways to ensure that cloud resources are optimized for performance and cost at scale.

“We are particularly encouraged to see public cloud optimization and advancing a multi-cloud strategy as the top priorities for organizations this year,” said Tom Murphy, Chief Marketing Officer at Turbonomic. “We have had the privilege of helping many customers with both initiatives and we look forward to helping more.”

Survey results also found that today 62% of organizations are using only public cloud, with about half using two or more public clouds. Meanwhile, 28% of organizations are hybrid or multi-cloud with a private cloud component. And, given the motivations behind multi-cloud, it was no surprise that for 62% of organizations, public cloud PaaS will play a strategic role for their business within 18 months – solidifying itself as one of the fastest growing public cloud services.

Edge Computing Still in Early Days

Edge computing saw a slight increase in adoption in 2021 with 22% of organizations reporting they are leveraging it today. While adoption is still early, 79% of organizations believe that it is or will be relevant to their organization in the future. Minimizing latency was noted as the most relevant edge computing use case, but complexity was cited as the primary barrier to edge adoption.

With increased portability brought by containerization, service mesh, the rise of 5G, and the increasing ability to collect data at its source, edge computing will soon become more feasible for many organizations. Given the overwhelming agreement among respondents that edge is or will be relevant for their organization, it will be an important technology for CIOs to prepare for as they start to architect applications for the edge.