According to the results of the survey conducted by IBM Institute for Business Value in cooperation with Oxford Economics, only 3% of respondents reported using a single private or public cloud in 2021, down from 29% in 2019.
Of the almost 7,200 C-suite executives surveyed across 28 industries and 47 countries, findings indicate that the cloud market has entered the hybrid, multi-cloud era and discovered concerns around vendor lock-in, security, compliance and interoperability remain paramount.
In the area of cybersecurity more than a third of respondents did not indicate improving cybersecurity and reducing security risks are among their largest business and IT investments. However, 80% of those surveyed said data security being embedded throughout the cloud architecture is important or extremely important, to successful digital initiatives.
“Our research shows the message from decision-makers is clear: they want to be able to use a mix of different cloud solutions to meet different needs, and they want to do so securely, without being locked into a single provider," said Mark Cox, public cloud director for IBM UK & Ireland.
"An open hybrid cloud model is the best design to address these needs and will be the foundational architecture driving the next wave of transformation and innovation across sectors.”
As for vendor lock in, the survey found that the ‘one vendor approach’ to cloud is dead, with only 3% of respondents saying that they use either one private cloud or one public cloud in 2021. 79% of respondents said workloads being completely portable with no vendor lock-in is important or extremely important, and 69% said that vendor lock-in is a significant obstacle to improving business performance.
Other key findings include that 64% of respondents said viewed industry-related regulatory compliance as an obstacle to the business performance of their cloud environments. The study also revealed that enterprises need to assess how they use the cloud in terms of adoption, velocity, migration, speed, and cost savings opportunity. Other recommendations include focusing on security and privacy; ask which workloads should move to the cloud; make data work for you; set a tactical approach; and to determine the right team.
In related news, Tuesday saw legacy software firms accused of distorting cloud markets through "long-lasting, pernicious and unfair licensing practices" in a report commissioned by trade body Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE).
