Study: Organizations View Multi-Cloud Strategies as Beneficial

HashiCorp booth

Survey results of ‘The 2022 State of Cloud Strategy Survey’ commissioned by HashiCorp (NASDAQ: HCP), a provider of multi-cloud infrastructure automation software, shows significant business benefits from using multi-cloud infrastructure and places a strong emphasis on centralized cloud platform teams to help deliver those benefits.

The study from this year, conducted by Forrester, emphasizes the rising popularity of multi-cloud and demonstrates how enterprises are gaining from a multi-cloud approach as they implement a standard cloud operating model to capitalize on cloud benefits. The results also show that among the most typical issues impeding multi-cloud operations are cloud security, skills shortages, siloed teams, and inconsistent workflows.

To sum up, key findings of the study published by HashiCorp include:

  • 81% choose multi-cloud – A total of 21% of respondents said they would use multi-cloud infrastructures during the next 12 months, while 60% of respondents said they already do.
  • 90% say multi-cloud is working – The vast majority of those who have already chosen a multi-cloud strategy claim it is already assisting their organization in advancing or accomplishing its business objectives.
  • 86% rely on cloud platform teams – Businesses have realized they require a centralized team, such as a cloud platform team or a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), to operationalize their cloud initiatives and establish standard procedures throughout the company.
  • 94% are overspending in the cloud – Nearly all respondents mentioned unnecessary cloud spending. The main causes of this overspending were a lack of necessary skills, overprovisioned resources, and idle or underutilized resources.
  • Skills shortages ranks as the top multi-cloud barrier – Respondents stated that a lack of skilled workers increases security concerns, leads to unnecessary cloud spending, and prevents a company from operationalizing multi-cloud.

Cloud Center of Excellence

Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO at HashiCorp
“Organizations benefiting from multi-cloud nearly doubled from last year, and the majority of organizations now have a centralized cloud team,” said Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO at HashiCorp.

The results of the poll would show that multi-cloud is currently the de facto industry standard for infrastructure among enterprises, with reliability, digital transformation, scalability, security, and governance serving as its primary motivators. In multi-cloud systems, operational complexity is still a problem for enterprises. As a result, businesses claim to be putting in place centralized functions, like a cloud platform team or a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), which are in charge of a number of crucial duties, like standardizing cloud services, developing best practices and operational policies, and centralized security.

One in four firms reported exceeding their annual expected cloud spend, and almost all respondents stated their organization had avoided needless cloud costs. Resources that are idle or underutilized, resources that are overprovisioned, a lack of necessary expertise, or manual containerization are all factors that contribute to needless cloud cost. Only 6% of those surveyed stated they had never spent money on needless cloud costs

“Looking at this year’s State of Cloud Strategy Survey, we see the generational shift that cloud represents for technology, organizational design, and delivery process,” said Armon Dadgar, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at HashiCorp. “Organizations benefiting from multi-cloud nearly doubled from last year, and the majority of organizations now have a centralized cloud team. This centralized expertise enables them to operationalize at scale and benefit from their cloud strategies. Not surprisingly, we saw skills shortages move to the top of the list of cloud blockers, reinforcing the need for cloud platform teams and infrastructure and security automation tools.”

Survey Methodology

HashiCorp hired Forrester Consulting to broaden their respondent pool beyond the HashiCorp contact database and to add impartial analysis for their second annual State of Cloud Strategy Survey. 1,039 practitioners and technical decision-makers from North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as Asia-Pacific, participated in a Forrester online survey. The respondents work for businesses with 1,000 or more employees across a range of industries.