Cost, security and talent remain limiting factors for cloud adoption, according to a new study.
The cloud is not merely a mainstream computing model — it is the basis for nearly every essential business technology initiative. That’s why the vast majority of organizations are aggressively pursuing public, private and hybrid cloud strategies to meet their future IT needs.
While the significance of the cloud is beyond debate, it also introduces considerable challenges. Unexpected costs, nagging security issues and a persistent lack of internal skills and resources rank as the leading cloud obstacles, according to Flexera’s recently released 2023 State of the Cloud report.
In Flexera’s annual survey of IT professionals and executive leaders, 82 percent cited spend management as their No. 1 cloud challenge, followed by security (79 percent) and a lack of resources/expertise (78 percent). It marks the first time in more than a decade that security was not ranked as the top challenge facing organizations.
Controlling Costs
Cloud spending comprises nearly half of the average company’s technology spend in 2022, and the Flexera report expects that trend to continue. Nearly half of survey respondents said they expect to increase cloud spending in 2023 despite ongoing economic uncertainty. However, research shows that roughly a third of all cloud spending is wasted on overprovisioning resources to ensure application availability.
Notoriously complex and confusing provider pricing structures often contribute to overspending by obscuring potential cost-cutting options. For example, according to Flexera, roughly two-thirds of organizations aren’t taking advantage of provider discounts that could help them optimize cloud spending. Common provider discounts include:
- Reserved instances. Customers who commit to using a specific amount of computing resources over a fixed period are typically billed at a significantly lower rate compared to on-demand instances.
- Spot instances. Some providers allow customers to bid on unused instances, which can be significantly cheaper than on-demand instances.
- Usage-based discounts. Some providers offer tiered pricing models in which the cost per unit decreases as you consume more resources.
- Prepaid commitments. You can sometimes get significant discounts by prepaying for a specific amount of usage over a set period.
- Volume discounts. Some providers offer lower rates or additional benefits as your usage or spending increases.
- Special discounts. Providers often offer discounts or special benefits for startups, non-profit organizations, educational institutions and research initiatives.
Cloud Attacks Increasing
Attacks on cloud systems nearly doubled in 2022, and that trend is likely to continue given the increased concentration of valuable data and workloads in the cloud. Part of the problem is a lack of visibility into cloud environments. IT pros say the rapid acceleration of cloud migrations makes it difficult to accurately monitor and track data and applications across sprawling multi-cloud environments.
Cloud asset management (CAM) solutions increase visibility by creating a complete end-to-end view of the cloud ecosystem, even across multiple clouds. They accurately discover and inventory cloud apps in use across the organization, provide granular insight into app usage and help ensure compliance with software licensing terms.
Cloud access security brokers (CASB) also enhance the visibility and security of data and applications in the cloud. Acting as an intermediary between on-premises and cloud environments, CASBs enforce security policies, monitor cloud activities and apply security controls to ensure compliance and mitigate risks. CASBs offer features such as user authentication, data encryption, access controls, threat detection and data loss prevention, allowing organizations to extend their security posture to the cloud.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) services also boost security across cloud environments by combining solutions such as secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers, firewalls and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) into a centrally managed service. ZTNA assumes that everyone and everything accessing network resources is a threat until their identity has been verified and validated. With SASE, administrators can easily extend zero-trust principles from the data center to the cloud.
Closing the Skills Gap
Demand for cloud services has accelerated so rapidly in recent years that the talent supply simply hasn't been able to keep pace. In several recent surveys, more than half of organizations report they lack the internal skills and knowledge necessary to extend their cloud capabilities. They also project that their cloud migration plans will be delayed by two years or more due to the lack of internal cloud skills.
Too often, organizations with cloud skills gaps allow users to provision their own cloud services. However, this ad hoc approach often creates cascading problems. Organizations can wind up running many more cloud instances than they need, leading to wasted resources and unexpected costs. Users can also introduce vulnerabilities by trying to personalize their cloud experience with plug-ins or configuration changes that aren’t recorded, tracked or approved.
Organizations that don’t have the in-house expertise to effectively monitor and maintain cloud environments are increasingly turning to managed service providers (MSPs) for help. MSPs provide on-demand access to the cloud skills and knowledge that are so difficult to find in the open market. An MSP can provide expertise with specific cloud environments, such as hybrid cloud and multi-cloud, or specific projects, such as migration, cloud cost management, performance optimization, security and compliance.
