News

IT Modernization Study Shows Workloads Moved Off Public Clouds

• By David Ramel
• 05/27/2020

Although many studies have confirmed the importance of public cloud initiatives in IT modernization efforts, a new report actually shows an increasing number of workloads being moved off of public clouds.

This finding comes from th "The State of IT Modernization 2020" report from research firm IDG. Conducted late last year, the online survey was designed to evaluate the state of IT modernization efforts in several areas including an operating model involving centers of data spanning on-premises, cloud, edge, etc., application modernization preparations, and IT processes.

One highlight of the report is that changes to cloud strategies last year most often included completing initial cloud-native initiatives (50 percent) and adopting a multicloud approach using more than one public cloud provider (49 percent). Along with that, 84 percent of respondents reported having moved select workloads from a public cloud to alternative cloud or non-cloud location, such as on-premises datacenters.

The workloads most often moved off public clouds include database, website/web apps, dev/test, and BI/data warehouse/data analytics.

IDG said this reflects challenges involved with "determining optimal workload placement in today's multicloud and hybrid cloud landscapes." Indeed, the hybrid cloud movement again shows strong in this report, with IDG saying: "64 percent of organizations that have completed their initial IT modernization initiatives have switched from an all-private or all-public cloud strategy to a hybrid cloud approach, again highlighting the trial-and-error that many companies undergo to find the optimal cloud path for their needs."

Other highlights of the report include:

• The top 3 IT modernization challenges in 2020 are projected to be establishing governance strategies and processes, defining and optimizing IT operating models, and integrating centers of data.
• Public cloud cost overruns are common, with 69 percent taking steps to reduce these overages.
• Application modernization is inhibited by a lack of automation capabilities.
• Top obstacles to IT modernization in 2019 included competing priorities (44 percent), outdated processes and tools (43 percent), outdated infrastructure (40 percent), and skills gaps (38 percent).
• More than 8 in 10 organizations (84 percent) have outsourced or started outsourcing cloud management to a managed services provider. Use of managed services is high across all IT modernization maturity levels.
• Adoption of managed services is important at every stage of the IT modernization journey, with an average of 95 percent of respondents stating they outsourced one or more IT functions to a managed services provider.

The report announcement provides access to a PDF that includes full report findings along with methodology.