Multicloud is the new reality in enterprise technology according to a study from 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, commissioned by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The study collected information from 1,500 respondents at enterprises—organizations with more than 1,000 full-time employees in North America or more than 500 in other regions—about how they use the cloud within their organization and found that almost every cloud journey is now becoming a multicloud journey.
In recent years, cloud has become nearly synonymous with IT as enterprises seek increased business agility and improved operational efficiency from the technology they use. While these trends have existed for some time, more than 90 percent of respondents agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a strong driver of greater interest and investment in cloud technology. As organizations faced new challenges such as increased levels of remote work and collaboration with new business partners and suppliers, they adopted a multicloud strategy to gain the flexibility and scalability they needed for this new reality.
Almost every cloud journey is multicloud
Key findings from the study include the fact that 98 percent of enterprises surveyed are using or plan to use at least two cloud infrastructure providers and 31 percent are using four or more. 96 percent reported they are using or plan to use at least two cloud application providers (Software-as-a-Service), with 45 percent using cloud applications from five or more providers. This multicloud strategy allows IT departments to meet the specific technology needs of different teams across the organization.
Data sovereignty and cost optimization drive demand for multicloud strategies
The top two drivers of multicloud strategies in enterprises are data sovereignty (41 percent) and cost optimization (40 percent). Other drivers of multicloud strategies include business agility and innovation (30 percent), best of breed cloud services and applications (25 percent) and cloud vendor lock-in concerns (25 percent). Multicloud strategies give enterprises more control over where and how their data is stored and used, while also ensuring businesses can control the costs of their cloud operations by adjusting which services they use from different providers.
Enterprises are proactively planning multicloud strategies for the future
Data redundancy (54 percent) is the most anticipated future use case, followed by data mobility (49 percent) and cost optimization across public clouds (42 percent). IT departments also plan to use multicloud strategies for risk mitigation for the entire IT environment (40 percent) and geographic expansion or global service delivery (38 percent). The fact that IT departments are planning multicloud strategies shows that they see multicloud as a way to get ahead of their technology needs, instead of simply a tactic to react to crises.
Methodology
The survey data used in this report was collected by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, and commissioned by Oracle. The global survey was fielded in the third quarter of 2022 and is based on a cross-industry sample of 1,500 enterprise respondents in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. For the purposes of this survey, “enterprise” is defined as an organization with more than 1,000 full-time employees (North America) or more than 500 full-time employees (other geographic regions).
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