IT teams are struggling with network infrastructure challenges caused by the cloud

Public cloud adoption is growing by double-digit percentages year over year, and the public cloud market is expected to exceed $220 billion by the end of 2019, according to Gartner. However, the survey findings from Dimensional Research reveal that IT teams are often siloed and do not agree on who is responsible for the deployment and ongoing management of the public cloud network.

At the same time, IT teams are struggling with network infrastructure challenges caused by the cloud, such as impaired visibility and more-frequent security threats. Ninety-seven percent of companies report having problems with deploying and managing public clouds. These issues are creating a gathering storm that ultimately puts organizations at financial risk.

“Public cloud deployments are rapidly growing but IT teams do not have the proper visibility to see infrastructure in public cloud environments, which frequently causes costly problems,” said David Gehringer, principal at Dimensional Research. “More concerning is that networking, DevOps and cloud teams are not working together as efficiently as needed to handle rapidly expanding cloud deployments. They recognize that these problems have resulted in a negative impact in multiple areas, and that a new solution is needed to avoid further financial consequences and a descent into turmoil.”

IT teams that have adopted public cloud are operating in disconnected silos

Survey findings reveal that IT teams do not agree on the following issues: who is responsible for the network in public cloud environments, who approves network changes, whether the networking team should be involved in new deployments and how cloud teams perceive networking teams.

• Networking and operations teams agree that networking teams are ultimately responsible for the network in public cloud environments. However, cloud and DevOps teams see this as a responsibility shared by cloud, networking and security teams.
• IT teams differ on who needs to approve changes to the public cloud portion of the network. Almost 90 percent of networking teams see this as their responsibility, but two-thirds of cloud teams see this as their responsibility.
• Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of cloud and DevOps teams see networking teams as moving “too slowly,” while only a minority of networking teams feel they move too slowly for DevOps teams.
• Many new deployments and changes are happening in isolation. The companies of nearly four in 10 respondents allow changes to the public cloud network without the networking team’s approval.

Public cloud environments has created deployment, management and security challenges

Networking, cloud and DevOps teams all agree that public cloud environments are opening the door to more challenges, resulting in negative impacts in multiple areas.

• More than 92 percent of respondents see visibility into the public cloud network as critical (citing it as important or very important). No one responded that it is unimportant.
• However, eight in 10 respondents reported having less visibility into the public cloud portion of their network than into other parts of the network.
• Nearly 60 percent said they do not have a solution to verify network segmentation in the cloud.
• More than half of the respondents reported an increase in the frequency of security threats due to public cloud utilization. What’s more, 85 percent reported their public cloud environments are not fully compliant.
• More than three quarters reported regularly having problems with their cloud network–ranging from a quarterly to a daily basis.

Issues with public cloud environments are having a negative financial impact on companies

Public cloud implementations have a high frequency of problems that can take significant time to resolve and have a negative impact on businesses. This leads to multiple issues.

• Increased cost of operations: Roughly half of respondents reported increased resource costs associated with remediation.
• Revenue loss: Almost half reported that public cloud network failures cause revenue loss.
• Reduced customer satisfaction: 70 percent reported that customer satisfaction is impacted if the public cloud network fails.
• Tarnished brand: Almost 40 percent reported that cloud failures would tarnish their company brand.

“One thing networking, cloud, DevOps and other teams can all agree on is that they need better solutions to provide visibility, predict issues, and understand the impact of new deployments and changes in their public cloud network,” said James F. Brear, president and CEO of Veriflow. “With these capabilities, public cloud networks will become a larger benefit to the business bottom line.”