Top Cloud Concerns For Organisations in 2016

There’s no doubt that organisations of all sizes are looking to cloud computing for IT cost savings and the ability to remain competitive as technology becomes a key part of doing business. But there are associated challenges for companies that do adopt cloud technology. We take a look at some of the top concerns for companies when it comes to cloud computing.

Cloud in his hand image from Shutterstock

For its 2016 State Of The Cloud study, cloud management software vendor RightScale surveyed 1060 technical professionals across a broad range of organisations on the topic of cloud computing. It showed that the adoption of hybrid cloud has swelled to 71 per cent – a huge jump from 58 per cent just a year ago – and that 83 per cent of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy. In total, 95 percent of respondents are now using cloud, up from 93 percent in 2015.

Enterprises are shifting more workloads onto the public cloud with the number of companies operating over 1000 virtual machines (VMs) in the public cloud now at 17 per cent. But private cloud still reigns supreme in this area with 31 percent of enterprises running more than 1000 VMs in there, up from 22 percent in 2015.

Cloud adoption has always been on a steady rise but the priorities and challenges that organisations face with this technology have changed. Whereas security used to be ranked as the biggest hurdle for companies dealing with the cloud, lack of resources and expertise is now the top concern. As seen in the table below, organisations with varying degrees of cloud maturity are all worried about not having the right people to help them make the most out of cloud computing:

Security is still a key concern for companies that are working with cloud technology and so is managing the cost of cloud computing with 26 per cent of respondents indicating that it is a major challenge for them.

“Improving cloud cost management provides a significant opportunity for savings, since few companies are taking critical actions to optimise cloud costs, such as shutting down unused workloads or selecting lower-cost cloud or regions,” RightScale said in its State Of The Cloud report.

The vendor noted the most common way that organisations are optimising cloud use is by monitoring utilisation and right-sizing instances, with 45 per cent of respondents saying they were already doing so. But there is room for improvement, particularly among SMBs.

“Thirty-six percent of SMBs are purchasing AWS Reserved Instances (RIs) to save money, but only 21 per cent are tracking purchased RIs to make sure that they are being fully utilised. When purchased RIs are not fully used, the savings decline, and the RI can end up costing more than on-demand instances,” RightScale said.

What’s the biggest cloud challenge your company is facing right now? Let us know in the comments.


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