What you should know about the public cloud - Cohesity
Cohesity announced results of a global survey of 900 senior IT decision makers that shows a major expectation gap exists between what IT managers hoped the public cloud would deliver for their organisations and what has actually transpired.
More than 9 in 10 of respondents across Australia, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States believed when they started their journey to the cloud, it would simplify operations, increase agility, reduce costs and provide greater insight into their data.
However, of those that felt the promise of public cloud hadn't been realised, 92 per cent of Australian respondents believe it is because their data is greatly fragmented in and across public clouds and could become nearly impossible to manage long term
Mass data fragmentation refers to the growing proliferation of data spread across a myriad of different locations, infrastructure silos, and management systems that prevents organisations from fully utilising its value – including but not exclusive to public cloud environments.
There are several factors contributing to mass data fragmentation in the public cloud. First, many organisations have deployed multiple point products to manage fragmented data silos, but that can add significant management complexities.
The survey, commissioned by Cohesity for Vanson Bourne, found that nearly half (49 per cent) of Australian respondents are using 3-4 point products to manage their data – specifically backups, archives, files, test/dev copies, - across public clouds today, while nearly a fifth (18 per cent) are using as many as 5-6 separate solutions.
Respondents expressed concerns about using multiple products to move data between on-premises and public cloud environments if those products don't integrate. Sixty-five per cent are concerned about security, 52 per cent worry about costs and 39 per cent are concerned about compliance.
Additionally, data copies can increase fragmentation challenges. More than a third of Australian respondents (39 per cent) have four or more copies of the same data in public cloud environments, which can not only increase storage costs but create data compliance challenges.
A disconnect between senior management and IT
IT leaders are also struggling to comply with mandates from senior business leaders within their organisation. Almost nine in ten (87 per cent) respondents say that their IT teams have been given the mandate to move to the public cloud by senior management. However, nearly half of those respondents (44 per cent) say they are struggling to come up with a strategy that effectively uses the public cloud to the complete benefit of the organisation.
Eliminating fragmentation unlocks opportunities to realise the promise of the cloud
Despite these challenges, more than nine in ten (91 per cent) believe that the public cloud service providers used by their organisation offer a valuable service. The vast majority (98 per cent) expect that their organisation's public cloud-based storage will increase by 93 per cent on average between 2018 and the end of 2019.
Nearly nine in ten (87 per cent) believe the promise of the public cloud can be better realised if solutions are in place that can help them solve mass data fragmentation challenges across their multi-cloud environments. Respondents believe there are numerous benefits that can be achieved by tackling data fragmentation in public cloud environments, including: generating better insights through analytics / artificial intelligence (54 per cent), improving the customer experience (57 per cent), and maintaining or increasing brand reputation and trust by reducing risks of compliance breaches (49 per cent).
