Enterprises Moving More Workloads to Cloud, Managed Hosting: Survey
In INAP’s report, two-thirds of respondents say days of on-premises data centers are numbered
Enterprises will continue moving more of their workloads into the cloud or to managed hosting or colocation environments to improve such areas as management, scalability, and security, according to a survey by data center and cloud solution provider Internap.
The Lowdown: In its State of IT Infrastructure Management report, INAP surveyed more than 500 IT professionals about their current IT infrastructure and future plans and found that the trend is toward migrating applications out of their on-premises data centers.
The Details: About 42% of respondents said the top two frustrations with their current infrastructures were that they were not fully optimized for their applications and that IT staffs were spending too much time managing and maintaining the environments.
Other key findings of the survey:
> Moving workloads: 88% of respondents with on-premises data centers said they will migrate at least some workloads to the cloud, managed hosting services, or colocation facilities in the next three years.
> To the cloud: 70% said multicloud and hybrid cloud strategies have made management easier. In addition, 69% run workloads on one or more cloud platforms, though 32% that use a cloud or managed hosting provider exclusively use one type of hosted environment, such as bare metal, private cloud, or multitenant public cloud.
> AI and automation: 81% of respondents said that most common data center and network tasks will be completely automated thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
> Future of on-premises: Two-thirds (66%) said that by 2025, on-premises data centers will be virtually non-existent. INAP noted that in a study last year, IT professionals expected a 38% reduction in on-premises workloads by 2022.
> Going serverless and to the edge: By 2025, most applications will be deployed under serverless models, according to 74% of respondents, and 75% said most enterprises will adopt an edge computing strategy as demand for lower network latency grows.
The full report can be seen here.
The Impact: INAP’s survey confirms what similar studies have shown — that enterprises in an increasingly data- and cloud-centric world are looking to reduce the amount of data center infrastructure they need to buy and manage, opting instead for cloud or managed service models.
The Buzz: “The role of the IT professional is changing, and for the second consecutive year, they’re making it known that they want to lead digital transformation initiatives,” said Jennifer Curry, senior vice president of global cloud services for INAP. “The results show IT professionals would much rather spend their time assessing their systems for outsourcing (cloud readiness) or designing complex multi-service environments rather than performing routine tasks which can be easily outsourced, such as monitoring their infrastructure. These activities would have a larger business impact and add more value to their organization, so IT leaders should use this as a wake-up call and figure out how to adjust their strategies accordingly.”
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