HashiCorp’s first State of Cloud Strategy survey says 76% of respondents are multi-cloud, and within two years, 86% expect to be. The results skew bigger – 90% of companies larger than 5,000 say they use multiple clouds… but 60% of small businesses, defined as fewer than 100, are also reporting multiple cloud environments, which is expected to rise to 81% in two years.
Google commissioned a report on modernizing banks, finding that 83% of respondents were using cloud as part of their primary computing infrastructure. Per ZDNet, “The research found that although the vast majority of financial institutions have adopted cloud technologies in some form or other, organizations are still keeping some of their core activities on-premises.”
Insider, meanwhile, is reporting the “honeymoon is over for cloud computing.” While a catchy headline, the main focus – cloud is moving into maturity, and a focus on “cloud smart”, where companies identify applications and data which are a good fit for the cloud, versus “cloud first”, where can result in “poorly matched use cases.”
And while we’re talking cloud, Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Government Top Secret, bringing 60 services to the government in accordance with Intelligence Community Directive 503, which is the set of politics for IT systems used by intelligence agencies.
Cloud Smart is a phrase to highlight here, and the continued value of an IT company. It’s the advisory services most of all.
I continue to use the US government and secrecy as the gold standard for proving the viability of the cloud. If it can handle Top Secret data, it can handle any data. That’s not to say any cloud solution works for any data set, as evidenced by the distinct Top Secret offering.
Obvious statements, and still worth repeating. Here’s the key – for those calling themselves managed services providers, how much of the offering is focused around cloud rather than device management?