LogicMonitor polled 135 cloud
professionals at AWS re:Invent to explore how companies are managing their
workloads in the data center and in the cloud. The survey shows more than half
of respondents are engaging with multiple public cloud platforms and that 11
percent have hybrid workloads combining both on-premises and public cloud.
"Moving
towards a single public cloud platform sounds tidy," said Steve Francis,
LogicMonitor Founder and Chief Evangelist. "The reality is much messier, with
multiple cloud platforms, a mix of cloud and on-premises and even innovative
solutions such as VMware Cloud for AWS and Azure Stack."
The Future of Cloud
Survey
participants report that while on-premises is still the most popular option for
managing workloads, that is rapidly changing. By 2020, respondents expect
on-premises workloads to drop from 46 to 25 percent, while cloud grows from 44
to 67 percent. Hybrid, which is categorized as a computing environment that
spans one (or more) clouds with one (or more) on-premises environments, remains
about the same only growing from 11 to 12 percent.
Respondents
identified the most important reasons to host workloads on-premises as
security, cost and compliance, whereas the most important factors for choosing
cloud include reliability, performance and flexibility.
Leading Cloud Providers
The
majority of respondents report using leading cloud vendors such as AWS, Azure
and Google Cloud Platform either in production or experimenting with each
platform.
-
In production:
- AWS
(81 percent)
- Azure
(28 percent)
- Google
Cloud Platform (13 percent)
-
Experimenting:
- Google
Cloud Platform (26 percent)
- Azure
(19 percent)
- AWS
(16 percent)
-
Combined (In-production and experimenting)
- AWS
(97 percent)
- Azure
(47 percent)
- Google
Cloud Platform (39 percent)
Fifty-four
percent of respondents report using multiple cloud platforms (either in
production or experimenting). Twenty-eight percent are using multiple cloud
platforms strictly in production. Additionally, respondents are starting to use
new variants of the major cloud platforms, including Azure Stack (24 percent
are at least experimenting) and VMware on AWS (22 percent).
Not Putting All your Cloud Eggs in a Single Basket
The
survey shows there is strong interest in engaging with multiple public cloud
platforms. Respondents highlighted the top reasons for choosing to run in
a multi-cloud environment:
- More
cost-effective
- Redundancy
- Security
- To
find the optimal application environment
- Better
reliability and reduced latency
"There
is no one-size-fits-all for public cloud," said Sarah Terry, Senior Product
Manager at LogicMonitor. "Each platform has its strengths and organizations are
picking and choosing to fit their needs."
Forecast: Mix of Clouds with Some On-Premises
It appears respondents are a long way from a
single public cloud platform handling all of their organization's needs. When
asked how long they thought their organization would include a mix of cloud and
on-premises workloads, one-third of respondents say six or more years and one
in five say 10 years or more.