Cloud Users: Cautious & Confused
Comment (4)While hybrid cloud has become mainstream, hybrid cloud users are still hesitant about going all in, and are confused about some issues.
Some 81% of respondents to a recent survey by F5 Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FFIV) said they now operate in a hybrid environment, or are planning to do so. That's up from 59% who listed cloud as a top priority last year, according to a statement from F5 emailed to Light Reading.
But only 20% of respondents planned "to migrate at least half of their applications to the cloud in the next five years," F5 says. That means the cloud is still "a tactical resource" rather than a "strategic infrastructure initiative."
In other words, hybrid cloud users are still cautious.
What's the hold-up on cloud adoption? Organizations are looking for a unified access story, a way to manage user identities across the cloud. "They haven't quite got the hang of finding the ones that work best across all the clouds," Lori MacVittie, F5 principal technical evangelist, tells Light Reading.
Security and performance are big concerns, MacVittie says.
And yet, with regard to security, 60% of customers deploy, or plan to deploy, SSL over the next year, which takes care of in-flight encryption. "They've done it, and yet they're concerned about the move to the cloud," MacVittie says.
Users are also confused about DevOps.
"The number of people who say DevOps will have a strategic impact in the next year is low," MacVittie says. "And yet they still rated programmability high." Some 86% of respondents are deploying one to three frameworks, including VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), OpenStack and Python. In other words, they seem to place low priority on DevOps even while they're doing it.
Users may have difficulty defining "DevOps." "It's like 'cloud' in 2009 -- what does that really mean? They don't acknowledge it has an impact and yet they're doing a lot of it," MacVittie says.
As for SDN: Only 3% of respondents have implementations in production, but 36% are in the evaluation stage, MacVittie says in a post on the F5 blog.
F5's infographic says more -- see 2016: The State of Application Delivery. And read the whole report here: "The State of Application Delivery: 2016 Report."
Related posts:
— Mitch Wagner, 
, West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected]
