Global cloud migration continues to fuel a market projected to reach the $1 trillion milestone by 2028 Facts and Factorscloud will grow from $429.6 billion in 2021 to $1.0257 trillion in 2028. However, a recent report from Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Whichfound that 63% of IT and decision makers surveyed say their organizations lack support for a variety of cloud resources.
While the cloud offers scalability, growth, availability, lower costs and faster implementation times, but also poses challenges that are often underestimated or poorly understood.
Businesses continue to flock to the cloud to host their business online for a variety of reasons. As the era of data proliferation dawns, omnichannel strategies flourish and new apps are developed to improve the customer experience, organizations prefer cloud infrastructures for capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX).
Also disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and app development tools are another reason why companies are moving to the cloud. Unfortunately, cloud security and computing resources are often taken for granted.
Cloud success leads to growth but also challenges
Not all is bad news for those leveraging the power of the cloud. Quali’s Forrester Consulting report entitled; “Scaling and innovating with infrastructure automation,” revealed that 57 percent of leaders surveyed say their organizations have met or exceeded their performance expectations. This growth has prompted companies to continue investing in cloud technologies. But in this expansion plan, organizations are finding it difficult to meet their top priorities.
“Current infrastructure capabilities prevent organizations from acting as quickly as decision-makers would like because they lack the right resources, support or insights,” the report said.
Organizations active in multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments are most affected. Governance roadblocks slow businesses down and prevent them from scaling quickly.
Moreover, organizations are already experiencing the consequences of these cloud challenges. More than half (58%) of those surveyed say their business was more at risk, 52% say they incurred costs and “unnecessary costs” and 51% say the issues are limiting their ability to innovate.
The cloud is presented as the ultimate infrastructure solution to store and manage data and systems through dashboards and visualizations, but 60% of IT leaders complained about insufficient reporting, dashboarding and analytics. More than half of those surveyed say they need more support for provisioning approaches and complain about the lack of support for hybrid models.
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The Challenges of Cloud Security
Data loss, compliance, cyber-attacks and ransomware in the cloud are becoming more common. IBM’s “Cost of a data breach 2021The report studied 537 breaches in 17 countries and found some disturbing ones cloud security cost.
According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach for companies undergoing “highly significant digital transformation” during the pandemic was $4.26 million. Organizations in the mature stage of cloud modernization lost an average of 252 days identifying and containing a data breach.
IBM’s security report calculated that a public cloud breach costs an average of $4.8 million. When it comes to private cloud breaches, IBM has set the cost at $4.55 million, and for hybrid cloud breaches, the cost is $3.61 million. And cloud breaches continue to grow at an alarming rate.
I serve explains that cloud misconfigurations are one of the leading causes of attacks. Cloud environments added to more endpoints also create a more expansive ‘digital surface’. Cyber criminals will use phishing, account hacking, malware and DDoS attacks to find the weakest entry point.
In addition, organizations that rely on their cloud environments can be hindered from running their businesses if their cloud systems are compromised. Ransomware Attacks often lead to organizations ceasing their activities.
Cloud complexity and new technology can also cause human error and security misconfigurations. Finally, compliance, loss of visibility, data and workloads in cloud environments are also a challenge.
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What are organizations looking for in the cloud?
According to Forrester Consulting, the top cloud priorities of leaders are customers, performance and speed. The cloud is the perfect place to shape, create, and deliver multi-channel brand experiences for new or existing customers. This trend is transforming all sectors, from retail to automotive.
The Forrester report for Quali shows that organizations are looking to the cloud to execute these customer experience strategies. Specifically, they want to increase the cloud applications that serve their customers and generate more revenue.
Organizations have also learned hard lessons from global disruptions during the pandemic, the war in Russia and Ukraine, the freight and logistics crisis, the gas inflation crisis and regional international tensions. Supply chain disruptions have taken their toll on nearly every industry, from essential products to superconductors and chips.
The cloud provided companies with modern and capable solutions to better manage supply chains, providers and distribution. Cloud data analytics can keep demand and inventory in check, and cloud tools like AI or digital twin can predict disruptions and identify opportunities to optimize a supply chain in the face of disruptions.
Business leaders surveyed by Forrester Consulting for Quali agreed that “improving the resiliency to deliver their products and services consistently without interruption” was a top priority.
Scaling and governance are also top priorities in the cloud. In terms of business value, 58% of respondents say they want faster infrastructure, and 59% want faster hybrid cloud infrastructure automation.
Business leaders are eager to advance their business and infrastructure in the cloud. They believe that the cloud, with all its automation and benefits, will improve efficiency and productivity and provide better time-to-market delivery. However, the initial excitement about disruptive cloud technologies has cooled.
Organizations and businesses are starting to become aware of a new cloud reality. They are now focusing their efforts not only on migrating, operating and scaling in the cloud, but also on tracking results, detecting resource gaps and vulnerabilities, and strengthening their operations.
