A 2022 survey of 1,000 technology practitioners suggests that as more organizations embrace multi-cloud computing, the number of challenges being encountered is starting to multiply as well.  

The survey finds 81 percent are embracing a multi-cloud computing strategy, with 60 percent already doing so and another 21 percent planning to be multi-cloud within a year. Among respondents already using multiple clouds, a full 90 percent said their strategy is working in terms of advancing their organization’s business goals. 

The primary drivers of adoption of multiple clouds are reliability, digital transformation, scalability, security and governance and cost reduction. 

A total of 86 percent of those respondents also noted they have created a centralized team to manage multiple clouds. 

However, it’s also clear challenges remain. A full 94 percent of respondents recognize they are wasting money in the cloud, with idle or unused resources, overprovisioning of resources, lack of skills and manual containerization efforts being identified as the primary culprits. Nearly a quarter of respondents admitted their organization over spent on cloud services in 2021. 

A shrinking economy and cybersecurity concerns drives demand for external expertise 

As the economy continues to contract, it’s only a matter of time before more organizations become sensitive to the total cost of IT. As a rule, the willingness to rely on outsourced expertise tends to increase as the economy softens because more organizations become less inclined to hire full-time IT employees. 

Cybersecurity also remains a major concern with data theft, ransomware and phishing/ social engineering attacks all identified as major cloud security concerns. 

The more clouds an organization employs, the more there will be a need for additional external expertise to help optimize the consumption of cloud resources and secure the overall cloud environment.  

Limited talent pool and rising costs requires thoughtful investment 

The number of IT professionals that are proficient across multiple clouds is still limited. Organizations are increasingly finding themselves battling against end users and IT vendors alike to attract and retain people from the same relatively small pool of cloud experts. The alternative is to spend a lot of time and money training their own cloud experts only to see them take a higher-paying position somewhere else later. 

In effect, the total cost of providing cloud services tends to rise with each platform added to an IT professional portfolio. Organizations need to be certain the profit being generated by adding support for an additional cloud platform warrants the investment required. 

There are potentially hundreds of different classes of cloud services offered by any number of providers that an organization could choose to support. An organization needs to find the right cloud option for them. There are many things to factor in, and Access Tech can help the process easier by helping you identify and analyze key factors. We’ve been helping customers for years with their cloud-based systems, improving and implementing them. Contact us at Access Tech to get started.