Switzerland is on the way to becoming a multi-cloud

IT used to be much easier. This is not really true, but at least all data and applications ran on their own infrastructure in the basement of their own offices. Whether it was business-critical data did not matter. But then the cloud came and made that constant a variable. Suddenly, companies had options: on-premise, colocation, the public cloud, or hybrid hybrids. The clouds came with the cloud. Because who wants to secure, relies on a multi-cloud strategy. For example, companies want to minimize the risk of data loss. The idea behind it is that you distribute your data and applications to different cloud services from different service providers. This protects companies when, for example, a cloud service fails or a host has a defective hard drive to complain about.

The Dutch provider of data center services Interxion addressed the question of where companies are currently in relation to multi-cloud strategies. The company published the findings in the study “Cloud Trends: How to manage the cloud chaos?” , The study aims to highlight the benefits and hurdles of a multi-cloud strategy. 1400 IT decision-makers from major companies in 7 European countries were interviewed – 150 of the respondents came from Switzerland. Interxion gave the editors insight into the study and the answers of the Swiss IT decision makers.

D Enterprise Strategy Group has conducted a study on the use of cloud services. She examines how companies are moving their processes to the cloud, which variants they are using, and how they deal with multi-cloud environments. 

Swiss do not want to commit themselves in time

As the study shows, only 8 percent of respondents in this country has implemented an integrated multi-cloud strategy. Another 10.7 percent said that their multi-cloud has grown naturally over time. For these companies, it was created by shadow IT. However, there is a lack of a strategy to integrate cloud growth into company IT. In comparison to other European countries, Switzerland lagged behind. Across Europe, 10.4 percent of respondents already rely on the multi-cloud; an additional 11 percent have a haphazardly grown multi-cloud without integration strategy.

(Source: Interxion)

The vast majority of respondents are currently planning to implement an integrated multi-cloud strategy in the long term. This was reported by 41.3 percent of respondents. However, when it comes to a specific timetable, there is a bit more reluctance: only 32.7 percent are committed to implementing an integrated multi-cloud strategy over the next 18 months. Elsewhere, these numbers are just the opposite. Across Europe, just under 40 percent of respondents said they would implement a similar strategy over the next 18 months, and just under 33 percent remained vague about the timetable.

After all, 4.7 percent of the Swiss companies surveyed are content with a single cloud – or do not use them at all. In this respect, Switzerland is only just above the European average of 4.4 percent.

Other countries, other motivations

When asked why companies are making the move to multi-cloud, there is a clear argument in Switzerland: money. More than 30 percent of the interviewed IT decision makers from Switzerland stated that a multi-cloud strategy would allow them more flexibility. So they could target the clouds that are most cost-effective for their purposes. Although 26 percent responded across Europe with the same reasoning. But this is not the most common answer in other countries. The majority of respondents (28 percent) want to be able to optimally use the technological advantages of the individual cloud offerings. However, this is only 26 percent in Switzerland.

(Source: Interxion)

Putting it on different clouds also prevents vendor lock-in – that is, dependency on a single vendor. This is what more than 16 percent of European respondents and 12.7 percent of Swiss IT decision-makers want to avoid with a multi-cloud strategy. Stability is the main argument for 15.3 percent of the Swiss IT decision-makers surveyed. They want to increase the overall reliability by distributing their data and computing power to different providers and services.

After all, data protection still called 7.3 percent as a reason. However, in no other country is the share as high as in Switzerland. Across Europe, the average is 5 percent – in the Netherlands and Sweden only about 3.3 percent.

Especially promising for IaaS

According to the majority of respondents, a multi-cloud strategy is particularly promising in the area of ​​Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). 36 percent of Swiss IT decision-makers stated this. The number coincides with the European average. A further 30 percent consider the multi-cloud approach to be particularly promising when it comes to platform-as-a-service solutions. As far as this is concerned, the Swiss IT decision-makers see this a little differently than their European counterparts. Europe-wide, the average is just under 27 percent.

(Source: Interxion)

Much less called hybrid infrastructure in response to the question in which areas a multi-cloud strategy was particularly promising. Almost more than the European average. Only 10 percent, on the other hand, have focused their attention on software-as-a-service (SaaS), much less than in other European countries. Across Europe, 14.9 percent of respondents think that it makes sense to use different clouds, especially for SaaS solutions. In the Netherlands, the share was even over 23 percent.

Trust in the big ones instead of the local ones

The question: “Which provider do you prefer to implement in your multi-cloud strategy?” shows how confident the Hyperscale Clouds like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are. 28.7 percent of the Swiss respondents want to rely on the major international providers. A Europe-wide trend. In Switzerland, however, there is a slightly stronger preference for industry-specific cloud offerings. In Germany, for example, 23.3 percent of IT decision-makers want to use a combination of hyperscalers and industry-specific solutions. 21.3 percent want to use only industry-specific cloud offerings.

(Source: Interxion)

However, Swiss solutions are in short supply, as the study shows. Less than 5 percent of respondents consider local cloud providers. Nearly 10 percent are considering a mix of local and international providers. The local expertise cannot compete against international superiority. Only 5.3 percent of respondents want to develop their own multi-cloud strategy. And only 4 percent said they chose the cloud provider to follow the advice of their systems integrator or service provider.

Connectivity and security are in the way

With the hurdles that could stand in the way of multi-cloud adoption, a more uniform picture is again shown in the comparison of countries. 10 percent of the Swiss IT decision-makers surveyed – also the smallest group in the other countries – stated that a multi-cloud environment does not fit into their strategy.

(Source: Interxion)

The most common challenges are connectivity and security. For example, 30 percent of respondents in Switzerland believe that it is difficult to link the different clouds technically. A further 22 percent expect the use of different cloud services to increase security risk.

However, nearly 20 percent of respondents see the problem of implementing a multi-cloud strategy elsewhere. They said they did not know exactly what infrastructure their mission-critical applications and data would be hosted on.

Original Article Source from https://www.netzwoche.ch/storys/2019-05-03/wo-die-schweiz-auf-dem-weg-zur-multi-cloud-steht    Author: Oliver Schneider