Research reveals multicloud deployments are here to stay, but enterprises are looking to hybrid multicloud.
The findings of Nutanix’s fourth global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, which measures enterprise progress with cloud adoption. The research sheds light on trends and patterns across the cloud landscape in Singapore, highlighting multicloud as the most used deployment model currently — with adoption expected to jump to 63 per cent in the next three years.
However, the complexity of managing workloads across cloud borders remains a major challenge for enterprises, and there is a growing requirement for hybrid multicloud tools that unify and automate processes across dissimilar cloud platforms. To address top challenges related to interoperability, security, cost, and data integration, 82 per cent of respondents agree that a hybrid multicloud infrastructure, an IT operating model with a blend of interoperable private and public cloud environments, is ideal.
This year, survey respondents were asked about their current cloud challenges, how they’re running business applications now and where they plan to run them in the future. Respondents were also asked about the impact of the pandemic on recent, current, and future IT infrastructure decisions and how IT strategy and priorities may change because of it.
Key findings from this year’s report include:
Multicloud is the most deployed IT operating model in Singapore. More than a third of respondents from Singapore (38 per cent) said multiple clouds, including private or public, are their most used IT environment. Adoption of multicloud models amongst Singapore enterprises also outpaced that of their APAC (35 per cent) or global counterparts (36 per cent). Moreover, multicloud usage is expected to increase by 25 percentage points within three years, to 63 per cent penetration.
The pandemic has changed how nearly all organizations operate, and multicloud supports this new way of working. At least half of all employees in 62 per cent of Singaporean companies surveyed currently work remotely. Most organizations report that while their remote workforces may shrink or grow, they are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Multicloud offers the most agile IT environment for supporting this flexibility by distributing data to diverse geolocations for user proximity, and business continuity.
In Singapore, the growing acceptance of public cloud is fueling multicloud deployment. Nearly a third of respondents from Singapore (31 per cent) said they currently use two or three public cloud providers, outpacing the global (26 per cent) and APAC averages (26 per cent). Three use cases that harness the public cloud are expected to drive multicloud growth in the next three years: bolstering business continuity (42 per cent) with diverse data backup and redundancy; support for growing remote work requirements (39 per cent); and a desire to capitalize on cloud-native technologies (39 per cent) such as artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), which enable data analytics and operations automation.
Despite the rise of multicloud, key challenges in cross-cloud management remain. Singapore respondents ranked data integration (53 per cent), security (50 per cent), and application mobility (46 per cent) as key hurdles in multicloud management, outpacing global and regional averages. While multicloud is the most used operating model, and the only one expected to grow, most enterprises are struggling with the reality of operating across multiple clouds, private and public. This reality is not going away, and IT leaders are realizing that there is no one-size fits all approach to the cloud, making hybrid multicloud ideal according to majority of respondents (82 per cent).
Application mobility is top of mind. Nearly all organizations in Singapore (99 per cent) have moved one or more applications to a new IT environment over the last 12 months. Amongst local respondents, most cited improved security, and compliance (48 per cent) as the reason for the move, followed by hopes for faster app development (44 per cent), desire to integrate with AI/ML and other cloud-native technologies (41 per cent), and anticipated improvements in data access speeds (40 per cent). However, 76 per cent of respondents remain that moving a workload to a new cloud environment can be costly and time-consuming.
“The future of a hybrid world is here — from modes of operation to the workforce, and business agility has become mission-critical for enterprises looking to thrive in this new disruptive economy. As a result, we are seeing greater demand amongst Singapore businesses for hybrid multicloud models, prized for their agility and high levels of intercloud operability it offers. Ultimately, this enables businesses to align their cloud needs with strategic business priorities, streamline existing workflows and resources, enhance workforce productivity, and accelerate innovation at speed and scale,” shared Ho Chye Soon, Singapore country manager, Nutanix.
Ho added, “We expect the local demand for hybrid multicloud to continue on an upward trajectory in the coming years, alongside a growing need for platforms that seamlessly unify and automate processes across different cloud platforms and applications. This will be a key priority for Singapore enterprises as they race to gain competitive advantage and further support hybrid work productivity, and we are ready to support businesses as they chart their cloud futures on their own terms.”
