New Research Measures Confidence in Public Cloud

Barracuda, a Campbell, California-based security vendor has released a new study indicating that IT professionals are becoming more confident in the public cloud, despite ongoing concerns about security.  Overall, the findings indicate that although IT professionals are gaining confidence in the cloud, organizations face growing constraints when it comes to cloud access. More than three-quarters of respondents use multiple cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Among the highlights, 56% of respondents are struggling to ensure seamless availability and “always-on” access to cloud applications for their organizations. Nearly 70% experience latency and performance issues running SaaS workloads, such as Office 365. More than 70% of respondents are using traditional access methods, such as MPLS, in their organization’s network. More than 60% say their MPLS costs increase heavily due to seasonal workload peaks. More than 70% of respondents have plans to implement an SD-WAN solution in the next 12 months to address cloud-connectivity issues. At the same time, nearly 60% say their organization is hesitant to adopt an SD-WAN solution because of fears that they are complex and expensive.

“As organizations continue to radically transform their infrastructures and rely more on the public cloud, they are uncovering new connectivity and security challenges,” said Klaus Gheri, VP of Network Security at Barracuda. “But by embracing highly flexible secure access service edge (SASE) solutions, organizations of all sizes and types can improve connectivity, simplify management, and strengthen security.”

The report entitled, “Cloud networks: Shifting into Hyperdrive,” is based on a survey of 800 executives, individual contributors, and team managers with responsibility for their organization’s cloud infrastructure. They came from organizations of all sizes in EMEA and the US, across a broad range of industries, including construction, education, finance, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, retail, transportation, and others.

Channel Impact^®
Channel partners can glean a number of useful data points around cloud sales and related security. These can be especially useful among clients or prospects who might still have trepidations about the public cloud.