Major skills concerns for hybrid cloud

New research indicates that even though most companies see hybrid cloud as an increasingly attractive IT model, many are having trouble implementing it, largely due to the lack of appropriate skills.

The hybrid cloud is rapidly gaining in popularity, not least because of the way in which it facilitates interoperability between public and private clouds. In fact a new study claims that 85% of organisations agree it is the ideal IT model.

The study (Hybrid Cloud is Here to Stay: Now What?) undertaken by Vanson Bourne,  market research specialists in enterprise technology, canvassed opinions from 650 IT decision makers across Europe, USA, Japan, the Middle East and Africa, and the results make interesting reading.

The consensus is that although hybrid cloud is viewed very highly, the reality is that many organisations are struggling to adopt it. In fact, 70% of organisations are taking longer than expected to deploy hybrid cloud.

According to the report, 95% of respondents believe an optimal hybrid cloud deployment could, potentially, provide consistency across IT constructs and multiple clouds, whilst also giving the flexibility to choose the right cloud for the right application.

However, many of the hoped-for benefits are simply not being achieved and one of the primary reasons for this is the fact that public and private cloud infrastructures require distinct skill sets to manage them. The result is that most organisations (88%) are struggling to ensure their IT department has the necessary skills to manage a hybrid IT infrastructure, with 53% viewing this as a top concern.

Managing public and private clouds requires different skill sets, tooling and policies, and most companies often need separate teams with different skills and knowledge. Finding and retaining qualified IT staff is often a challenge, even more so when managing applications and data across two different cloud environments.

This shortage of cloud skills is preventing over two thirds (69%) of respondents from moving more applications to the public cloud.

Other hybrid cloud-related concerns identified by the report involve security, budget and complexity:

• Worries about running business-critical applications on public cloud, especially with regard to reliability (75%), portability (73%) and cost (72%)
• Cost and complexity issues can stop organisations from moving their applications, due to the need to re-architect or re-platform applications (75%) and for the sheer complexity of a migration (71%)
• The thorny problem of software licencing, with 88% of respondents identifying this as a key aspect of a hybrid IT infrastructure, since many have run into difficulties surrounding licencing (58%) or vendor lock-in (58%) when moving to public cloud

Finally, the IT skills issues can also have a knock-on effect, as different teams are often required to manage public and private cloud environments, leading inevitably to the development of siloes. These can potentially impact the organisation’s bottom line through resource sprawl or a waste of resources.

Skills gaps can be addressed with specialist training and targeted recruitment, but this research clearly highlights a lot still needs to be utilise the full potential of the hybrid cloud.