Fujitsu Cloud Orchestration Study
Fujitsu, a leading Japanese provider of ICT business solutions, is using its own expertise to continue shaping society together with its customers in the future. Fujitsu promotes a "Human Centric Intelligent Society" with the aim of creating innovation by integrating people, information and infrastructure. Digital co-creation aims to combine business expertise with technology to create added value for partners and customers. The implementation of digital transformation is based on artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and clouds.
New Fujitsu study among IT decision-makers
Fujitsu conducted a global survey among 253 IT decision-makers, with respondents from large companies with more than 500 employees. In previous years, the corresponding surveys had already been carried out in these companies. The study entitled "State of Orchestration 2018/19" again clarified that a successful digital transformation in large companies can only be achieved through appropriate cloud orchestration. Accordingly, the demand for multi-cloud environments within companies is growing and there is a need for further action through improvements in the area of multi-cloud management.
The survey once again proved that meaningful cloud delivery is an essential part of corporate strategy. Seven out of ten respondents said they rely heavily on a cloud to deliver an adequate service to their customers. However, 53 percent of the IT specialists admitted that they lacked internal know-how to operate their various clouds efficiently.
Multi-cloud environments from different vendors
The study found that companies work with an average of nine different cloud vendors. One third of the respondents even named 10 to 20 different providers. Nevertheless, the term "cloud only" or "cloud first" is increasingly used. The need to apply such strategies is becoming increasingly topical, with 21 percent of the IT specialists surveyed stating that they are pursuing the "cloud first" strategy. A year ago, the figure was only 12 percent.
As a result, multi-cloud environments are increasingly becoming standard, with the number of different vendors expected to continue to grow. 64 percent of the companies surveyed believed that multi-cloud applications will be an integral part of their own business over the next two years.
Orchestrating diversity
However, it is difficult to organise and manage this diversity. Four-fifths of companies saw the need for more effective orchestration of the cloud environment. Other factors include the costs involved (cited by 55 percent) and the choice of the right vendor (51 percent). In addition, there is an optimal finding of diversity and the way there, which is a great challenge for companies.
In fact, more and more multi-cloud environments are being used. The respondents agree that the complexity of the various applications must be managed, which is why 76 percent of IT users consider orchestration to be necessary. For 55 percent of the respondents, costs are the biggest challenge for 51 percent of the IT specialists to achieve the goal of optimal orchestration, as is choosing the right partner. After all, 91 percent of the respondents agreed that it should be easier to move workloads between the individual clouds.
The IT specialists were asked about the advantages of orchestrating multi-cloud environments. Transparency and control were the most important plus points for 62 percent of the respondents, followed by the need for cost savings with 49 percent and the possibility of a consistent user experience with 46 percent.
Orchestration – actually a music term – is the flexible combination of multiple services into a single meaningful composition. The new Fujitsu study showed how important it is to automate and link different IT services. IT management makes a major contribution to a company's success. Orchestration contributes to this success and prevents clouds from being used by different departments on their own.