Public cloud suffering huge expectations gulf

[sincity]

A major expectation gap exists between what IT managers hoped the public cloud would deliver for their organizations and what has actually transpired according to new research from Cohesity.

The firm conducted a global survey of 900 senior IT decision makers to discover that nine out of 10 respondents across the UK believed that their journey to the cloud would simplify operations, increase agility, reduce costs and provide greater insight into their data. However, this hasn't been the case and 95 percent believe it is because their data is greatly fragmented in and across public clouds which could make it nearly impossible to manage in the long run.

Vice president of products at Cohesity, Raj Rajamani explained how the public cloud can lead to greater data fragmentation, saying:

“While providing many needed benefits, the public cloud also greatly proliferates mass data fragmentation. We believe this is a key reason why 38 percent of respondents say their IT teams are spending between 30-70 percent of their time managing data and apps in public cloud environments today.”

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Mass data fragmentation

The term mass data fragmentation refers to the growing proliferation of data spread across a multitude of different locations, infrastructure silos and management systems that prevents organizations from fully utilizing its value.

There are several factors which contribute to mass data fragmentation in the public cloud and Cohesity's survey found that nearly half (42%) are using three to four point products to manage their data, including backups, archives, files, test/dev copies, across public cloud today. Some organizations are even worse off with 19 percent of those surveyed using as many as five to six separate solutions.

Respondents expressed concerns about using multiple products to move data between on-premises and public cloud environments with 59 percent concerned about security, 49 percent worried about costs and 44 percent are concerned about compliance.

Data copies can also increase fragmentation challenges as a third of respondents (33%) have four or more copies of the same data in public cloud environments which can increase storage costs as well as create data compliance challenges.

To truly harness the benefits of cloud, Rajamani explained that organizations first have to tackle mass data fragmentation, saying:

“It’s time to close the expectation gap between the promise of the public cloud and what it can actually deliver to organisations around the globe. Public cloud environments provide exceptional agility, scalability and opportunities to accelerate testing and development, but it is absolutely critical that organisations tackle mass data fragmentation if they want the expected benefits of cloud to come to life.” 

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