There was a time when the term cloud meant public cloud, and many analysts believed that this technology would eliminate the need for companies to run their own servers or locate infrastructure in a data center of their choice. However, over the last few years, the word hybrid has emerged, not just as an aspiration, but as the model preferred by most companies.

Although the public cloud offers great scalability and flexibility, the fact is that in this model, the service provider makes many decisions on behalf of the customer. Therefore, for companies that need to know how and where their data is located, local hosting remains a desirable option. Hybrid cloud gives businesses the flexibility to choose where to put each workload based on the requirements of that individual workload.

This report examines the typical enterprise cloud experience through a survey of 1,001 enterprise IT decision makers, finding that on-premises deployments need to be more flexible and pay-per-use than they have been. been up to now.

The need for a public cloud experience in the on-premises data center

Public cloud experiences are overwhelmingly positive. Of the 1,001 surveyed, an impressive 97% said their experience was good or better than expected; 64% said that the public cloud had exceeded their expectations. These data are quite significant if we take into account that, just a few years ago, the public cloud was spoken of as a new and probably immature technology.

It appears that respondents' hopes were high before they even started using the cloud. For each potential improvement, the majority of respondents expected public cloud to bring more benefits, ranging from 85% expecting improvements in resource provisioning to 65% expecting some benefit in lower start-up costs.

In general terms, reality met expectations. When asked if each potential improvement had occurred, only a small minority reported being disappointed. Public cloud provisioning and scalability were rated particularly well, with churn rates of just 3% and 5%, respectively. Start-up costs, utilization and cost reduction are less satisfactory but still fell short of expectations by a paltry 8-10%.

Private experience remains an object of desire.

However, despite such positive experiences with public cloud, there is no indication that private cloud or on-premises deployments will go away in the near future: two-thirds of workloads handled by decision makers they are located in the local environment.

In 451 Research's 2019 study, Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud, Hosting & Managed Services, Workloads and Key Projects, it was found that, in all likelihood, the number of companies that would choose private cloud as their preferred location for business functions principals was going to grow from 19 to 27% in the next two years. HPE's Market Monitor Service predicts a CAGR of 15% for global public cloud revenues over the period 2018-2023, with private cloud enabling technologies close at 12%.

No matter how superior the public cloud experience, some companies simply want to know where their data is, how it's managed, and maintain accountability for all elements of its protection. This explains why data security and privacy are high on the list of concerns for decision makers: 68% see security and compliance as a barrier to public cloud adoption, and 60% opt for data loss. In fact, all of the potential benefits/challenges we asked about were considered issues for adoption.

In a similar Voice of the Enterprise study from 451 Research, respondents viewed specific security requirements, compliance, and data protection as barriers that prevented certain workloads from being hosted in the public cloud. Control was also among the top priorities, with 23% of companies avoiding the public cloud due to issues such as performance and availability. Cost also ranks high, perhaps due to the issue of scale: Bandwidth, storage, and other variable public cloud costs can skyrocket as data gravity drives data growth across the cloud. Cloud.

Considering that public cloud is seen as a positive experience and private cloud is seen as secure and compliant, it makes sense that the vast majority of enterprises today are taking the hybrid approach of using on-premises and public cloud deployments. , with the option to choose the location based on the specific requirements of each workload. 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise study finds that 57% of businesses are adopting a hybrid model.