IT Trends 2018: Cloud Optimization

Most businesses today have a good understanding of the advantages of the cloud and how to use it to fulfill their business goals. As a result, the general trend towards cloud services and cloud deployments shows no sign of slowing.

In fact, 451 Research has stated that more than two thirds of businesses now expect to operate within a multi-cloud environment by 2019. In short, the more cloud services are seen to benefit businesses, the more cloud services are adopted.

However, it’s at this point – once IT departments have grown used to the cloud as an everyday presence, and have begun to layer-in additional applications and services – that IT Managers generally start to notice the ‘cracks’ in their infrastructure. Perhaps they realize that they are receiving differing levels of service from their cloud providers, or that they have multiple, differing SLAs in place which are challenging to monitor. Maybe they find they are overspending, or maybe the cloud applications they have in place simply are not fit for purpose and require re-architecting.

Either way, it is seldom you would find a business that would not benefit from optimizing its cloud environment.

As a result, (and as IDC has recently pointed out), the market is seeing strong uptake of services supporting public and hybrid cloud environments – “Spending on managed and professional services around cloud adoption are, collectively, the second largest opportunity in the whole cloud market, accounting for 31% of all cloud-related spending in 2016 and 2021.”

To regain control over their cloud assets in 2018, organizations will increasingly look to managed services. The tools and services can provide deep visibility into, and comprehensive reporting on, the performance and utilization of their cloud environment, and can enable them to track and control costs and consumption in real-time.

As the adoption of cloud services within enterprises continues to increase, (with a predicted CAGR of 18% by 2021), CIOs can get ahead of the curve by investing today in systems and processes that will allow them to make the best-possible use of their cloud spend in the future.