Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 63 | Page 20

TRENDING with 92 % of respondents agreeing that success requires simpler management across multi-cloud infrastructures . To address top challenges related to interoperability , security , cost and data integration , 90 % agree that a hybrid multi-cloud model , an IT operating model with multiple clouds both private and public with interoperability between , is ideal .
“ Multi-cloud is here to stay , but complexity and challenges remain as regulations drive many of healthcare organisations ’ IT deployment decisions ,” said Joseph Wolfgram , Healthcare CTO , Nutanix . “ Regardless of where they are in their multi-cloud journeys , evolution to a hybrid multi-cloud IT infrastructure that spans a mix of private and public clouds with interoperability is underway and necessary for healthcare organisations to succeed .”
Healthcare survey respondents were asked about their current cloud challenges , how they ’ re running business applications now , and where they plan to run them in the future . Respondents were also asked about the impact of the pandemic on recent , current , and future IT infrastructure decisions and how IT strategy and priorities may change because of it . Key findings from this year ’ s report include :
• Top multi-cloud challenges include integrating data across clouds ( 49 %), managing costs ( 48 %), and performance challenges with network overlays ( 45 %). While multi-cloud adoption is trending upwards , most healthcare organisations are struggling with the reality of operating across multiple clouds , private and public . Given that more than 84 % say they currently lack the IT skills required to meet business demands , simplifying operations is likely to be a key focus for many in the year ahead . However , IT leaders are realising that there is no one-size fits all approach to the cloud , making hybrid multi-cloud ideal according to the majority of respondents
• Application mobility is top of mind . All healthcare organisations ( 100 %) have moved one or more applications to a new IT environment over the last 12 months , likely moving applications out of legacy three-tier environments and into private clouds given healthcare ’ s above-average private cloud and traditional data centre penetration . Yet , 80 % of respondents agree that moving a workload to a new cloud environment can be costly and timeconsuming . They cite security ( 48 %) most often as the reason for the move , outpacing the global average ( 41 %), followed by gaining control of the application ( 38 %), and improving performance ( 36 %)
• Focus on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery is helping to drive cloud adoption . Due to being a highly regulated industry , healthcare organisations have been slower to embrace the public cloud as a main component of their IT environments for security reasons . However , healthcare IT professionals indicated an intent to use public cloud services as supplemental IT infrastructure to which they can fail over for improved Business Continuity levels and Disaster Recovery setups ( BC / DR ). In fact , they cited improving BC / DR most often as motivating their three-year plans to increase multi-cloud use ( 38 %). Healthcare ’ s interest in boosting BC / DR could prove to be the impetus for greater public cloud acceptance , as this use case has a strong public cloud component , which could accelerate the industry ’ s general multi-cloud usage
• Top healthcare IT priorities for the next 12 to 18 months include adopting 5G ( 47 %) and AI / ML-based services ( 46 %), and improving BC / DR ( 45 %), and multi-cloud management ( 44 %). Healthcare respondents also said that the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred them to increase their IT spending in certain areas such as bolstering security posture ( 62 %), implementing AI-based self-service technology ( 60 %), and upgrading existing IT infrastructure ( 48 %)
For the fourth consecutive year , Vanson Bourne conducted the research on behalf of Nutanix , surveying 1,700 IT decision-makers around the world in August and September 2021 . The latest report is supplemental to the global Fourth Annual Enterprise Cloud Index master report and focuses on cloud deployment and planning trends in the healthcare industry , based on the responses of 250 IT professionals in that market . It highlights healthcare provider cloud plans , priorities , and experiences and includes comparisons of the healthcare industry ’ s multi-cloud activity with that of other markets and the global response base overall . The respondent base spanned various business sizes and geographies including the Americas , Europe , Middle East , and Africa ( EMEA ) and Asia Pacific Japan ( APJ ) region . p
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