IBM transformation report establishes the dominance of hybrid cloud

IBM has found that only 3% of businesses still use a single private or public cloud in 2021, a drastic decrease from 29 percent in 2019.

Such a shift marks the emergence of hybrid cloud models as the dominant IT architecture in cloud transformation.

The global study was undertaken by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) in partnership with Oxford Economics, surveying close to 7,200 C-suite executives from 28 industries and 47 countries.

The subsidence of private and public cloud models for hybrid cloud comes as 79 percent of stakeholders say their top priority digital objectives require comprehensive and advanced cloud capabilities.

IBM also charts the importance of the pandemic for the speed of this shift, with its research indicating that 59 percent of surveyed organisations had their digital transformation roadmaps accelerated by Covid-19.

The study argues that enterprises need to assess how they use the cloud in terms of adoption, velocity, migration, speed, and cost savings opportunity. Key takeaways from the report include:

• Focus on security and privacy – determine where your critical workloads reside and scrutinise who and what has access to them
• Ask which workloads should move to the cloud – take inventory of the IT environment to successfully determine which workloads and applications will yield the most value in the cloud and which are better suited to stay on-premises
• Make data work for you – analyse workloads using AI driven tools and best practices to determine where and how to put them in the right place for the right reason
• Set a tactical approach – address the technology trade-offs, such as selecting the best approach to modernize specific applications and manage important issues like security, governance, and disaster recovery
• Determine the right team – put a cross-disciplinary team of people to work rethinking how your enterprise creates value for its customers

Howard Boville, head of IBM Cloud Platform, said: “In the beginning of their cloud journey, many companies dabbled with several different clouds that created complexity and disconnected piece parts, potentially opening them up to major security threats.

“Today’s finding reiterate that security, governance and compliance tools must run across multiple clouds and be embedded throughout hybrid cloud architectures from the onset for digital transformations to be successful.”

Looking to learn how establish a strategic hybrid cloud? Learn more about the virtual Hybrid Cloud Congress, taking place on 18 January 2022 and explore how to optimize and unleash the power of your hybrid cloud.