Cloud - the key to modernisation?

Nearly 60% of respondents agree that cloud adoption has improved their organisation’s agility, but that they could be more agile still. This finding comes from the fourth and final part of the Cloud Impact Study from Aptum, the hybrid multi-cloud managed service provider. The report, titled The Modernisation Minefield, examines the deployment of workloads on different infrastructures and the adoption of cloud services at enterprise application level.

The independent research reveals that, despite only 39% of IT professionals being completely satisfied with their rate of cloud transformation, the adoption of practices that lend themselves to cloud native technology and enable agility remains low. 

Only 20% of respondents are utilising DevOps across all applications, and just 17% use container services to develop and deploy all apps. DevOps and container services increase agility by speeding up application deployment times, improving productivity through continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), enabling easy and frequent patching, and minimising production costs. 

Respondents recognise many of the benefits of DevOps and container services adoption, with common anticipated benefits from further adoption including increased operational efficiency (77%), improved responsiveness (59%) and improved customer experience (58%).

So, what is stopping organisations from realising their cloud native potential?

Effectively refactoring applications requires an up-front commitment of resources and investment, including hardware, software, people, and skillsets like DevOps. The alternative of lifting and shifting an application into a cloud environment can often be a more expensive and less successful endeavour and can deter organisations that already have sunk costs. In fact, findings from part two of the Cloud Impact Study, The Security and Compliance Barricade, found that refactoring legacy applications for cloud infrastructure is a top barrier to cloud transformation (35%), second only to security and compliance (38%). 

As a result, for seven out of nine application categories – Human Resources (HR), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), backup, disaster recovery, bespoke applications, development, and operations – on-premises remains the preferred hosting option.

Marvin Sharp, VP Product and Strategy, Aptum explains, “Moving applications from on-premises to the cloud is not a simple case of virtualising workloads in data center servers as opposed to on-site servers. To see efficient, agile, and profitable results, refactoring applications where appropriate is essential. If you don’t modernise applications to make them cloud native, costs can be far more unpredictable. 

Sharp continues, “Respondents want to accelerate their cloud deployments, but on-premises still serves a purpose for some and will continue to for the near future. Organisations may already have sunk costs and want to make the most of their current investment, or it’s simply not a priority to migrate non-critical applications like CRM to SaaS. That’s why a gradual hybrid approach to transformation that aligns with hardware lifecycles, budgets and business goals is crucial. Working with a partner with knowledge of both legacy infrastructure and cloud-native technologies will optimise that approach.” 

As noted in each of the Cloud Impact Study reports, organisations recognise that they need expert help to plan and execute their transformation strategies. Choosing a Managed Services Provider that understands which areas of a business can be enhanced through cloud services, and which areas should remain on-premises is a crucial step in that process. 

The full findings of the final part of Aptum’s Cloud Impact Study 2020/21, The Modernisation Minefield can be found here. 

Aptum’s Cloud Impact Study was created from the opinions of 400 senior IT professionals in the US, Canada, and UK across industries in financial services, IT, technology, telecommunications, manufacturing, retail, public and commercial sectors. The final two reports will focus on Costs and Budgets and Modernization Opportunities.