The Record - Issue 20: Spring 2021

62 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om V I EWPO I NT Shifting cloud networks into hyperdrive K L AU S GHE R I : BAR RACUDA IT professionals around the world are gaining confidence in the cloud, but organisations are facing growing constraints when it comes to cloud access P ublic cloud is driving digital innovation. As IT organisations around the world continue to radically transform their infrastructures, evolve the way services are pro- vided, and deal with security issues, cloud use and dependence continue to grow. In addition to day-to-day operations, for many businesses, public cloud is now seen as a prerequisite for innovation-driven growth. To capture current attitudes and opinions about public cloud, access constraints, security concerns, emerging solutions, and a variety of related topics, Barracuda commissioned inde- pendent market researcher Censuswide to sur- vey IT decision makers in the United States, Germany, France, and the UK. The results of that research were published in the Cloud networks: Shifting into hyperdrive report. The survey includes responses from 800 executives, individual contributors, and team managers with responsibility for their organi- sation’s cloud infrastructure. They came from organisations of all sizes in EMEA and the US, across a broad range of industries, including construction, education, finance, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, retail, transporta- tion, and others. The report uncovers some interesting perspec- tives on the evolving cloud landscape. IT profes- sionals are gaining confidence in the cloud, with more than three-quarters of respondents using multiple cloud providers. Nearly 80 per cent of these respondents also say that their organisa- tion has deployed an Azure-based network. However, organisations face growing con- straints when it comes to cloud access. 56 per cent of respondents are struggling to ensure seamless availability and ‘always-on’ access to cloud applications for their organisations, and nearly 70 per cent experience latency and per- formance issues running software as a service workloads, such as Office 365. At the same time, current network infrastruc- ture is growing increasingly costly. More than 70 per cent of respondents are using traditional access methods, such as multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), in their organisation’s net- work. More than 60 per cent further said that their MPLS costs increase heavily due to sea- sonal workload peaks. As a result, IT professionals are looking for easier and more economical connectivity while still maintaining security in their cloud net- works. More than 70 per cent indicated that they have plans to implement an SD-WAN solution in the next 12 months to address cloud-connectivity issues. Many companies are dealing with aging infrastructures, making SD-WAN a logical choice to alleviate perfor- mance and cost constraints inherent in those older architectures. By deploying a natively built, all-in-one solution that combines secu- rity and network optimisation to create a secure SD-WAN framework, organisations can reap the full benefits of public cloud. Klaus Gheri is vice president of network security for Barracuda