Security and compliance obstacles among the top challenges for cloud native adoption

Cloud native adoption has become an important trend among organizations as they move to embrace and employ a combination of cloud, containers, orchestration, and microservices to keep up with customers’ expectations and needs.

To discover more about the motivations and challenges of companies adopting cloud native infrastructure, the O’Reilly “How Companies Adopt and Apply Cloud Native Infrastructure” report surveyed 590 practitioners, managers and CxOs from across the globe, and found that while nearly 70 percent of respondents said their organizations have adopted, or at least have begun to adopt, cloud native infrastructure, more than 30 percent of respondents still have not adopted any sort of cloud native infrastructure.

Nearly 50 percent of survey respondents cited a lack of skills as the top challenge their organizations face in adopting cloud native infrastructures. Respondents also identified problems in migrating from legacy architecture and transforming their corporate culture.

Another top challenge included overcoming security and compliance obstacles – important hurdles that continue to require attention when considering cloud native implementations.

Other key findings include:

• 40 percent of respondents use a hybrid cloud architecture. The hybrid approach can accommodate data that can’t be on a public cloud and can serve as an interim architecture for organizations migrating to a cloud native architecture.
• 48 percent of respondents rely on a multi-cloud strategy that involves two or more vendors. This helps organizations avoid lock-in to any one cloud provider and provides access to proprietary features that each of the major cloud vendors provide.
• 47 percent of respondents working in organizations that have adopted cloud native infrastructures said DevOps teams are responsible for their organizations’ cloud native infrastructures, signaling a tight bond between DevOps and cloud native concepts.
• Among respondents whose organizations have adopted cloud native infrastructure, 88 percent use containers and 69 percent use orchestration tools like Kubernetes. These findings align with the Next Architecture hypothesis that cloud native infrastructure best meets the demands put on an organization’s digital properties.

“With today’s ever-changing technology advancements, there is a fundamental movement to adopt a cloud native infrastructure,” said Roger Magoulas, Vice President of O’Reilly Radar.

“Companies are rising to the occasion and meeting the increasing demands of users and customers, but it’s important to remember that true cloud native success takes time. Start small and focus on the shift of services gradually, while investing in the transition. As the cloud native market continues to develop, we expect to see many opportunities for tools and training to help ease the transition to new architectures and to bridge the cloud native skills gap.”