Cloud Security, Cloud Security

Majority of IT pros view the hybrid cloud as a permanent destination

A symbolic data cloud is seen at the 2014 CeBIT technology trade fair on March 10, 2014, in Hanover, Germany. (Photo by Nigel Treblin/Getty Images)

Hornetsecurity on Monday reported that 67% of IT professionals surveyed view a hybrid cloud solution as a permanent destination.

The hybrid cloud adoption survey, based on responses from more than 900 IT professionals from North America and Europe, also found that 93% are adopting a hybrid cloud and on-premises solution or migrating to the cloud within five years, with one or two workloads remaining on-premises.

Another 28% say they will remain “mostly on-premises” with a workload or two in the cloud, while some 34% of companies also cite trust issues with the cloud as reason for workloads remaining on-premises. The hybrid cloud adoption survey also found that trust issues with the public cloud are present within companies of all sizes, with 31% to 36% of all surveyed company size categories reporting concerns.

The security operating model has emerged as one of the primary challenges with hybrid, said Douglas Murray, CEO at Valtix. Murray said cloud security and the shared responsibility model have fundamentally different requirements than on-premises. Murray added that security is also different at each cloud provider and many surveys have shown that most organizations are multi-cloud already.

“It’s imperative that IT leaders map out a strategy and architecture that enables them to execute well in both the on-prem and multi-cloud worlds,” Murray said. “Unfortunately, the easy answer of just bringing on-prem technology to the cloud and calling it hybrid not only doesn’t work, but actually makes matters worse by slowing down agility. IT leaders need to find platforms that simplify multi-cloud security, while enabling the speed the cloud requires. These multi-cloud security platforms can easily complement existing on-prem solutions.”

John Yun, vice president of marketing at Confluera, said the large percentage of respondents expecting hybrid as the final topology of their infrastructure is actually contrary to many recent studies and similar surveys. Yun said not only are cloud adoptions accelerating, many organizations are now tackling adoption of multi-cloud services.

“For many organizations, they cannot migrate to the cloud fast enough,” Yun said. “There’s no doubt that not all industries are the same and some require additional cybersecurity readiness and finer control over their infrastructure. However, security built into the cloud services as well as modern cloud security solutions address many of these concerns."

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