Private cloud adoption increased over the past year, leading to a rise in hybrid cloud environments, according to a new report from RightScale, a provider of enterprise cloud management technology.
The company’s 2016 State of the Cloud Survey of 1,060 technology professionals at large and small enterprises across a range of industries showed that private cloud adoption rose from 63% to 77%, driving hybrid cloud adoption up from 58% to 71% year-over-year. The survey was conducted in January 2016.
Organizations surveyed use six different cloud offerings on average, and are moving more workloads to the cloud, the study shows. Some 17% of enterprises now have more than 1,000 virtual machines in a public cloud, up from 13% in 2014. Private cloud showed even stronger growth, with 31% of organizations running more than 1,000 virtual machines, up from 22% in 2014.
Security is no longer the top cloud challenge for companies. A lack of resources and expertise is now the number one cloud challenge, cited by 32% of respondents and supplanting security, which was cited by 29%.
About one quarter of the organizations (26%) of respondents identify cloud cost management as a significant challenge. Cloud cost management provides a significant opportunity for savings, since few companies are taking action to optimize cloud costs, such as shutting down unused workloads or selecting lower-cost cloud or regions.
"The survey showed a significant inflection point in cloud adoption, matching what we see among our enterprise customers," Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale, said in a statement.
