Technological advancements enhance business agility and resilience and enable the new power to create new innovative approaches. Business leaders know the advantages of cloud and tech adoption, yet most Business leaders struggle with the complexity of making all their cloud environments work together. A new IBM survey data reveals more than 77% of respondents have adopted a hybrid cloud approach to drive a digital transformation journey. Still, they struggle to manage regulatory compliance, security, and skilled professionals.
- More than half of respondents are presently concerned about security, while 53% believe ensuring compliance in the cloud is currently too difficult
- Nearly 70% of those surveyed say their team lacks the skills needed to manage cloud environments efficiently.
The data shows a strong correlation between hybrid cloud adoption and progress in digital transformation. In fact, 71% of respondents believe it’s challenging to realize a digital transformation’s full potential without a solid hybrid cloud strategy.
At the same time, only 27% of respondents possess the required characteristics to be considered as “advanced” in their transformation journey. So, why the disconnect? A sampling of findings includes the following three points.
1. Compliance: Organizations think ensuring compliance in the cloud is currently too challenging, mainly as we see enforcement of regulatory compliance demands heat up worldwide.
2. Security: While organizations have adopted security practices to secure the cloud infrastructure, security concerns still remain.
3. Skills: As businesses face a suitable talent shortage, they fail to execute a holistic hybrid cloud strategy, which can create gaps in security and compliance and cause risk across cloud infrastructure.
Howard Boville, Head of IBM Cloud Platform, said, “As we see regulatory requirements grow across the globe, compliance is top of mind for business leaders. This concern is even greater for those in highly regulated industries. Yet at the same time, they are facing a growing threat landscape – one that demands holistic management of their multicloud environments to avoid the risks of a Frankencloud – an environment that’s so disconnected, it’s difficult to navigate and can be nearly impossible to secure, particularly against third and fourth party risks, An integration strategy to bring together these different piece parts is what we believe separates the leaders from the rest of the pack – the alternative is to pay the price of the Frankencloud.”
The 2022 IBM Transformation Index: the State of Cloud Revealed:
The lack of suitable skills is hindering the advancement
Regarding managing their cloud applications, 69% of respondents say their team lacks the talents required to be proficient. This is a major roadblock to driving innovation, with more than a quarter of respondents stating skills and talent shortages are hindering their business’s cloud goals.
The impacts don’t stop here – these limitations also prevent businesses from leveraging the power of partnerships. Over one-third of respondents say a lack of technical skills is holding them back from incorporating ecosystem partners into cloud environments. This challenge is even greater in the US, where nearly 40% admit to this shortage of skills – pointing to the demand for talent.
Vulnerability to cyber threats persists in lurking despite adopting security practices
While more than 90% of replying financial services, telecommunications, and government companies have embraced security tools such as confidential computing capabilities, multifactor authentication, and more, gaps prevent businesses from driving innovation. 32% of overall respondents cite security as the top obstacle for integrated workloads across environments. More than one-quarter of respondents accept security challenges present a roadblock to achieving their cloud business goals.
Security troubles can even prevent organizations from unlocking partnerships’ full potential. As potential security gaps can cause third and fourth-party risks to loom, respondents say data governance (49%) and cybersecurity (47%) are the top concerns to fully integrating their business ecosystem into the cloud.
Regulatory and compliance needs remain center stage causing businesses to pause
With regulations on the rise, so too are compliance challenges. 53% of respondents think that ensuring compliance in the cloud is too tricky, and nearly one-third cite regulatory compliance issues as a critical barrier to integrating workloads across private and public IT environments. In financial services, for example, more than a quarter of respondents agree that meeting industry requirements are holding them back from fully achieving their cloud objectives. These challenges span the globe and are mainly prevalent in Singapore, China, India, and Japan.
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