Confidence in public cloud grows, but challenges persist

More and more organisations are using public cloud providers and are gaining confidence in their offerings, but are still facing growing constraints when it comes to cloud access.

This is according to new research from Barracuda, which finds more than three-quarters of organisations are now using multiple cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

The findings also revealed that, despite growing confidence in public cloud, respondents are struggling to ensure availability and access to cloud applications for their organisations, they are experiencing issues with SaaS workloads, and find MPLS costs increase heavily due to seasonal workload peaks.

The report, titled 'Cloud networks: Shifting into hyperdrive', was conducted by Censuswide and surveyed 800 global IT decision makers to capture their attitudes and opinions about public cloud, access constraints, security concerns, emerging solutions, and a variety of related topics.

The respondents came from organisations of all sizes in EMEA, APAC and the US, across a broad range of industries, including construction, education, finance, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, retail, transportation, and others.

When it comes to growing confidence, the report finds that nearly three-quarters are using multiple cloud providers and nearly 80% of respondents say their organisation has deployed an Azure-based network.

However, 56% of respondents are struggling to ensure seamless availability and always-on access to cloud applications for their organisations.

Furthermore, nearly 70% experience latency and performance issues running SaaS workloads, such as Office 365.

The report also finds that current network infrastructure is growing increasingly costly.

In fact, more than 70% of respondents are using traditional access methods, such as MPLS, in their organisation's network. However, more than 60% say their MPLS costs increase heavily due to seasonal workload peaks.

As a result, IT professionals are looking for easier and more economical connectivity.

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 organisation is hesitant to adopt an SD-WAN solution because of fears that they are complex and expensive.

Barracuda VP of network security Klaus Gheri says, "As organisations continue to radically transform their infrastructures and rely more on the public cloud, they are uncovering new connectivity and security challenges.

"But by embracing highly-flexible secure access service edge (SASE) solutions, organisations of all sizes and types can improve connectivity, simplify management, and strengthen security.

Barracuda provides cloud-enabled, enterprise-grade security solutions to protect email, networks, data and applications.