FINAL WORD
Multi cloud, hybrid
cloud, dominate
annual investments
Adrian Pickering, Regional Head for Middle
East and North Africa at Red Hat.
R
ed Hat surveyed more than 400
Red Hat customers from around
the globe about their annual
priorities, including top challenges, budget
allocation, cloud deployment strategies,
and plans for emerging technologies.
Last year’s survey revealed that
most respondents were on the digital
transformation journey and looking
to shift their investments to modern
infrastructure and applications. The Red
Hat Global Customer Tech Outlook 2018
saw a bit of a shift from previous years,
however, and some findings highlighted
respondents’ mind shift towards doing
more with existing IT investments. Others
exemplified the role cloud initiatives are
playing within organisations.
Here is what we learned from the Red
Hat Global Customer Tech Outlook 2018.
IT spend is shifting
While spend in 2017 focused on optimising
existing IT, most respondents are
planning to spend more of their budgets
in the following areas: delivering cloud
infrastructure and services 36%; integrating
data and applications 76%; and developing
and deploying modern applications 30%.
Cloud initiatives are expected to
continue growing and maturing in
2018: As in 2017, funding for cloud
infrastructure was cited as a top focus for
investments among survey respondents
in 2018 36%, with hybrid and multi-cloud
favored. Most organisations surveyed 61%,
also now define their cloud infrastructure
strategies as hybrid, as compared to last
year, when it was a split between hybrid
30% and private 38%.
While hybrid cloud is the hot strategy,
some respondents are still going beyond
66
For most organisations, artificial intelligence, machine
learning, and IoT, are not high priority areas in 2018,
according to Adrian Pickering at Red Hat.
hybrid coordination to workload portability
across more than one cloud concurrently,
using multi-cloud strategies for their apps.
About 37% of responding organisations are
moving towards a multi-cloud future, either
deploying or planning to deploy a multi-
cloud infrastructure in 2018. building blocks of digital transformation—
with investments in integration, cloud
infrastructure, and modern apps. This
is perhaps a good indication that among
enterprise customers, this is simply how
they are delivering more modern services
now—no transformation tag needed.
Modernising IT investments top
challenge and priority Emerging technologies are
still emerging
While most organisations were tackling
digital transformation according to our
2017 survey, this year one priority for
many respondents is addressing the
challenges associated with optimising
and modernising existing IT investments,
which 42% of survey respondents ranked
as a top challenge in 2018. Additional top
challenges include improving security
47%, automating processes 36%, and
integration of data, processes and apps
26%. Additionally, 31% of respondents
consider modernising existing IT
investments a funding priority this year. Over 50% of respondents reported they
have no plans to conduct research or
implement artificial intelligence or machine
learning solutions in 2018. A little over 40%
said the same of the Internet of Things.
For most IT organisations, these emerging
technology areas are still emerging and not
a top priority in 2018. As upstream open
source innovation advances these areas, we
expect to see adoption plans follow suit in
future surveys.
Modernise first, transform
second OR digital transformation
by any other name?
Everyone is talking about digital
transformation, but are most organisations
executing on those initiatives?
Surprisingly, our data showed that only
19% of respondents plan to execute on
digital transformation initiatives in 2018.
Because modernising existing IT remains
a top challenge 42%, we believe this
shows that respondents are focusing on
optimising those investments and creating
a more agile infrastructure before moving
ahead with full digital transformation.
That said, we also see evidence that
organisations are implementing the
For many organisations, cloud
strategies are still coming together
One-third of respondents say their
organisations do not have a defined cloud
strategy. This may be an indication that
enterprise customers are still carefully
watching the ever-evolving cloud
landscape. For IT leaders who have
defined their organisation’s cloud strategy,
we see this as an indication that they
may need to more clearly articulate that
strategy across their organisations.
Red Hat conducted an online survey in
September 2017 using TechValidate of a
pool of Red Hat customers about their tech
priorities and insights moving into 2018.
Respondents were from all over the globe,
representing the following regions: Asia
Pacific; Europe, Middle East, Africa; Latin
America; and North America.
Issue 16
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS