Mixing AWS, Azure Creates Cloud Spend Challenge For Corporates

Corporates are quickly embracing the cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), leading to fierce competition between some of the largest enterprise cloud service providers on the market today. But a new report from Kentik, a network analytics firm, says corporates actually tend to use cloud services from more than one provider.

Kentik released a survey of 310 IT and other corporate decision makers during Amazon Web Services’ re:Invent in November of last year. Reports in ZDNet said on Friday (Jan. 24) that the results reveal corporates are accelerating the pace of their adoption of multi-cloud deployments, so much so that it now outpaces that of hybrid cloud initiatives.

Corporates most commonly use a mix of AWS and Microsoft’s Azure cloud platforms, the survey revealed, with Google Cloud Platform a common choice for businesses as well.

The survey also revealed that 97 percent of respondents are using AWS, an unsurprising result considering the survey was conducted at an AWS event. More than one-third of that 97 percent said they are also actively using Azure, while nearly one-quarter mix AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

The mix of cloud service providers can introduce new challenges, particularly in the area of IT and cloud spend management. Researchers found that 10 percent of survey respondents said they are still tracking spend on AWS using spreadsheets, with nearly 30 percent pointing to cloud cost management as their biggest challenge related to cloud adoption. More than 20 percent also said security was their largest cloud management challenge.

ZDNet said the findings are particularly relevant for companies like IBM that target their services for organizations with hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. Last week, IBM said it plans to close its takeover of Red Hat in the second half of the year, an acquisition signaling IBM’s focus on multi-cloud environments.

“Companies such as Vodafone and BNP Paribas are leveraging IBM Cloud, where they benefit from our hybrid multi-cloud capabilities and access the most advanced technologies,” noted IBM CFO James Kavanaugh during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month, reports said.