LONDON — Although three-quarters of IT decision makers want to procure all cloud services from a single provider, the majority have purchased offerings from three vendors, resulting in a complex cloud environment that may be hindering their agility and speed to market, according to Telstra research.
Martin Bishop, head of Network, Applications & Services, Telstra Global Enterprise & Services, said, “Our research suggests that in an effort to satisfy diverse customer expectations, many businesses initially turn to multiple cloud vendors to meet their various infrastructure needs. The result can be a complex cloud environment that is hard for the business to manage, integrate and control.
“Despite this, our research also reveals that pooling resources into a single private cloud isn’t the ideal end-state either, with the majority of IT decision makers arguing this model fails to deliver the flexibility required for the varying types of processes, services and workloads that global companies must support.
“In a move away from the private clouds of yesterday, the trend in 2015 appears to be towards a hybrid approach, delivered by a single partner, fully accountable for an organizations cloud services end-to-end. In fact, our research shows that 72 per cent of IT decision makers would prefer a single provider or broker for all cloud services, then go through the challenge of managing multiple vendors,” Bishop said.
According to Telstra’s research, the flexibility and scalability associated with a hybrid cloud are what local IT leaders consider the most appealing benefits of this model.
“The market has shifted and customers now have the power to do what they want, when they want and how they want. Technology is clearly at the center of this enablement and organizations that can align the power of hybrid cloud with customer demands are well placed to create what we’re terming the Customer Centric Cloud – enabling more agile development and testing of applications, faster decision making and overall, an enhanced customer experience.”
Telstra’s research revealed that while four in ten (45 per cent) enterprises have adopted Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)- with 42 per cent planning to adopt it in the near future – cloud providers can do more to guide businesses on their IaaS migrations.
“Organizations that do not use IaaS could be falling behind their competitors – leaving themselves exposed to inefficiencies, high costs and without the ability to fully utilise critical information and data. Each of these issues is not just important from an IT perspective, but also has significant implications for the wider business and the end customers,” Bishop said.
For more information on Telstra’s new research whitepaper, Customer Centric Clouds – Hype or Hybrid?, visit Telstra online: http://connect.telstraglobal.com/hybrid-customer-clouds.html
