The study, entitled ‘Mapping the Multi-Cloud Enterprise’, was carried out by the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network in collaboration with A10 Networks.
127 IT professionals and business executives took part in the survey from North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Africa and the Middle East.
Around two thirds declaring deployment of enterprise applications across at least two public clouds, and 84% expressing expectation in regards to reliance increase within the next 24 months.
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However, a lack of sufficient security ranked highly in the minds of respondents in terms of challenges posed by multi-cloud systems.
63% identified improvement of security as the summit of their IT to-do list. Meanwhile, the acquirement of skills and expertise (37%), coming to terms with increased management complexity (33%) and achieving centralised visibility and management (33%) rounded off the top four issues.
The top requirements identified for improving multi-cloud security saw a three-horse race between centralised visibility and analytics (56%), automated tools (54%) and centralised management from a single point (50%).
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As for security-specific solutions, centralised authentication gained 62% approval from the sample, while 46% felt that centralised security policies were the way forward, and web application firewalls came in at 40%.
Dave Murray, head of thought leadership and research for the BPI Network, said: “Multi-cloud is the de facto new standard for today’s software- and data-driven enterprise.
“However, our study makes clear that IT and business leaders are struggling with how to reassert the same levels of management, security, visibility and control that existed in past IT models.
“Particularly in security, our respondents are currently assessing and mapping the platforms, solutions and policies they will need to realise the benefits and reduce the risks associated of their multi-cloud environments.”
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Gunter Reiss, vice president at A10 Networks, referred to the results as evidence of “a critical desire and requirement for companies to reevaluate their security platforms and architectures in light of multi-cloud proliferation”.
“The rise of 5G-enabled edge clouds is expected to be another driver for multi-cloud adoption.
“A10 believes enterprises must begin to deploy robust Polynimbus security and application delivery models that advance centralised visibility and management and deliver greater security automation across clouds, networks, applications and data.”
