Service providers
Enterprise IT Spending Priorities Are Changing
Solution providers should be heartened by the fact that companies planning to outsource tasks to external service providers will increase from 18 to 25 percent.
Data Center Optimization
Only 9% of IT leaders surveyed said their data centers are optimized. More than 60% said defining a data center platform strategy is one of their most challenging decisions.
Reliance on Service Providers
IT organizations are slowly increasing their reliance on outsourced service providers from 18% to 25% of tasks in two years. Factors weighing most heavily in the decision are cost (39%) and skills needed (37%).
Location of IT Resources
IT infrastructure and application workloads in corporate data centers are expected to shrink from 59% to 47% in two years.
IT infrastructure and applications workloads being outsourced are forecast to rise from 13% to 17%.
Co-location facilities will drop from 14% to 13%.
Public clouds are expected to account for 23% in two years.
The Security Fear Factor
A full 62% of IT decision-makers cited security requirements as a critical factor in their decisions. Compliance came in next at 37%.
A Multi-Cloud Universe
The number of respondents running workloads only in a private cloud will drop from 48% to 43% in two years.
The number running workloads only in a public cloud will increase from 28% to 32%.
Those running hybrid clouds will increase from 23% to 25%.
Number of Applications
The average enterprise today has 376 applications in use and expects that to grow to 426 in two years.
The number of applications managed by the internal IT team averages 342 and is expected to grow to 419 in two years.
Mission-Critical Application Workloads
On average, about 50% of application workloads are deemed to be mission-critical. The number is expected to rise to 57% in two years.
Movement of Cloud Workloads
Nearly 40% of organizations with public cloud experience reported having moved public cloud workloads back in-house, mostly due to security (55%) and cost (52%) concerns.
Application Assessments
43% of organizations have completed an application inventory.
31% define requirements for each workload.
20% have performed an application interdependency analysis.
34%, 41% and 36%, respectively, said they have such projects under way.
Technology Spending Priorities
Private clouds: 48%
Public clouds: 38%
Converged and hyperconverged infrastructure: 31%
Flash storage: 30%
Biggest IT Challenges
62% of respondents cited balancing day-to-day IT operations against time needed to drive business innovations as a top challenge, and 37% said it was the most difficult issue to address.
Priorities for IT Operation in the Next 12 Months
Expand cloud initiatives: 48%
Acquire new skill sets: 40%
Consolidate applications: 37%