The study, which canvassed the opinions of over 900 IT decision makers from Canada, North America and the UK, asked: “What do you expect your organisation’s approach to look like in one and three years’ time?” 10% of respondents stated that currently they primarily use hybrid cloud, with 28% anticipating they will be using hybrid cloud in three years’ time. In contrast, use of On-Premise hosting is anticipated to fall from 31% to 17% over the same period, whilst Private Cloud drops from 52% to 41%.
The drivers behind this shift appear to be largely economic. When asked to name the top IT Priorities within their organisations, Cutting IT Costs (49%) and Improving Processes and Operational Efficiencies (45%) were the two most commonly cited issues. When asked what the challenges in achieving these priorities were, Security (53%) and Data Protection (46%) were the most frequent responses given.
Toby Owen, Vice President Product, Peer 1 Hosting said: “The proposition of Hybrid Cloud is very compelling: cost savings, business agility and operational efficiencies are the qualities that IT decision makers are looking to bring into their organisations. From the research, it’s clear that hybrid cloud adoption is outpacing that of public and private cloud.”
Owen continues: “Hybrid cloud adoption appears to be held back by concerns largely related to security and data protection. Clearly these are areas where businesses cannot compromise. Fundamentally these concerns are about a perceived lack of control. As the industry responds to this, with truly scalable, flexible and controllable hybrid cloud solutions, I believe that IT decision makers will be quicker to adopt hybrid cloud than this research suggests.”