BMC Survey Looks at Enterprises’ Concept of Multi-Cloud Environments

The concept of public, private and hybrid cloud systems are well known. But now a new survey from software and IT services provider BMC asked more than 1,000 IT leaders about the evolving concept of the multi-cloud environment that seek to manage all of a company’s cloud resources as an integrated whole. The survey showed that in fact many enterprises don’t even have a good idea of how much they are spending on cloud services. The survey also examined why artificial intelligence is becoming an important technology for managing multi-cloud systems. The survey enabled BMC to recommend best practices companies can employ to make multi-cloud implementations more effective. Read on to learn more about multi-clouds and how companies are trying to harness them to boost efficiency.

Many IT executives have no idea what it costs to move to the cloud and stay committed to it. In fact, 40 percent of IT leaders have no idea how much their companies are spending on cloud platforms.

BMC’s found that 80 percent of IT leaders are aware that they need to seek “new approaches” of managing and integrating their use of public and private cloud services. As a result, the concept of multi-cloud implementations is evolving to manage, public, private and hybrid cloud resources as an integrated whole.

Enterprises are considering how they can use artificial intelligence to get a handle on their usage of multi-cloud services, their performance and cost. Currently, 78 percent of IT leaders say that they’re using artificial intelligence in one form or another to get more from the multi-cloud.

There is some debate over exactly what a multi-cloud is and is not, which can complicate managing these environments. More than half of respondents say that multi-cloud refers to some combination of public and private cloud as well as on-premises systems.

Nearly a quarter of IT leaders see the multi-cloud differently than their counterparts. Rather than define the multi-cloud as a combination of services, they believe the term multi-cloud defines all three environments—private, public, and on-premises.

When they evaluated the public cloud, 45 percent of IT leaders determined that cost optimization was the leading driver for its adoption. Cost optimization was also cited as a reason to use more than one public cloud service by 40 percent of respondents.

What else drove public cloud adoption? According to BMC, 44 percent of IT leaders said “maintaining agility” in the office was their top driver of public cloud adoption. It was followed by 40 percent of people who said “risk mitigation” was their top concern.

Just getting multi-cloud environments up and running is a problem in and of itself, the BMC survey found. However, automation was cited as a top challenge for companies implementing and managing multi-cloud environments. It was listed along with security, cost, and resource-intensiveness.

IT leaders identified where they intend to spend the most cash in the cloud. Over the next two to three years, they said they expected to spend the most money on security, performance, and cost management efforts. However, BMC didn’t estimate how much would be spent.

BMC offered companies some recommendations for managing multi-cloud environments after analyzing its survey results. BMC said companies should get a better idea of how much they are spending on cloud services and be proactive about bolstering cloud security. Successful multi-cloud management also requires improved automation and use of artificial intelligence.