A survey of over 280 IT leaders from organizations in the U.S. and Europe, each generating over $200 million in annual revenue, reveals that 57 percent expect to increase their reliance on managed service providers (MSPs) for managing, governing, and securing cloud computing environments. Additionally, 42 percent report that their usage of MSPs will remain consistent.
MSPs are the backbone of cloud strategies
Conducted by Hanover Research on behalf of GTT Communications, the survey finds more than two-thirds of respondents (68 percent) are relying on MSPs to manage and coordinate their cloud strategy. A total of 65 percent are using MSPs to manage private clouds, while 60 percent are using MSPs to manage public clouds. Only 2 percent of respondents said they are not using MSPs at all.
Tasks that MSPs are more trusted to perform include ensuring security (92 percent), migrations (89 percent), compliance (88 percent), multi-cloud computing (87 percent), cloud spending (87 percent), visibility (87 percent), licensing (84 percent), and skills augmentation (83 percent), the survey finds.
Furthermore, 93 percent of respondents are using multiple public clouds, with 43 percent using a mix of both public and private clouds. Just over a third (36 percent) primarily rely on a public cloud but are using private clouds to run specific classes of workloads for applications that typically require higher levels of security. Workloads are distributed across public clouds (41 percent), private clouds (37 percent), and on-premises IT environments (22 percent). This balanced approach highlights the growing role of hybrid IT.
The mixed bag of cloud providers
Enterprise IT organizations rely on a mix of providers, including Google (66 percent), IBM (64 percent), Amazon Web Services (AWS) (61 percent), Oracle (51 percent), and Microsoft (49 percent) for public cloud services. For private clouds, the providers include Oracle (55 percent), AWS (48 percent), Google (48 percent), Cisco (45 percent), and Microsoft (45 percent).
Security (56 percent), compliance (51 percent), artificial intelligence (50 percent), and customization and control (50 percent) drive the increased reliance on private clouds. These factors are all cited as major reasons for adoption.
Hybrid IT is the new norm
In general, IT organizations deploy public cloud services to take advantage of scalability and reliability. They select private clouds to ensure security and meet compliance requirements. The survey suggests that IT leaders are no longer automatically defaulting to the public cloud for deploying workloads. Hybrid IT environments have become the new normal. More organizations are now making decisions based on the type of data they need to process, store, and secure, rather than committing to one style of computing over another.
Regardless of the service provider, IT teams face numerous challenges in managing both public and private clouds. For public clouds, the main obstacles include technical skills (43 percent), migrating applications and data (43 percent), integrating AI enhancements (41 percent), and maintaining compliance (41 percent). In contrast, the top challenges for private clouds involve managing applications post-migration (38 percent), addressing technical skill gaps (38 percent), managing hybrid IT environments (38 percent), and handling container-based workloads (37 percent).
As cloud computing continues to evolve, MSPs that adapt to these shifts will be positioned to lead their clients through the complexities of modern cloud environments.
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This post originally appeared on Smarter MSP.