Canadian Hybrid Cloud Report: Operating Digital Business in a Hybrid Cloud World
CDW Canada’s 2023 Hybrid Cloud Report, Operating a Digital Business in a Hybrid Cloud World, provides insights into the growing shift to operating hybrid IT environments as well as the key trends impacting cloud uptake in Canada.
Canadian organizations are increasingly moving towards operating as digital businesses with digital products, services and experiences contributing to a greater proportion of their revenue. However, they have to transform and operate in a complex environment rife with economic and geopolitical challenges. This has resulted in the reprioritization of IT spending plans and the need to leverage public, private and hybrid cloud platforms to drive innovation, growth, business continuity and sustainability.
CDW’s Operating a Digital Business in a Hybrid Cloud World report provides insights into this growing shift to operating hybrid IT environments as well as the key trends impacting cloud uptake in Canada.
Benefits of adopting cloud platforms
IDC's Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey Wave 5, June 2023 highlighted that the majority of Canadian organizations are operating hybrid, multicloud environments, resulting in a series of benefits ranging from security to innovation to productivity – as well as accelerating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. The benefits experienced vary based on the organization’s state of cloud maturity, their size and availability of skills.
Figure 1: Top Benefits of Different Hybrid-Multicloud Platform Approaches
What is the top benefit an organization expects to get from its cloud platform approach?
Improve security of our data and applications
57%
Faster access to innovative technologies
42%
Improve IT staff productivity
40%
Accelerate use of AI & automation in business
38%
Better control over cloud costs
34%
Rapid application modernization
30%
Quicker time to market for our digital offerings
30%
Achieve a single source of data
26%
Canada = 100; Source: IDC’s Future Enterprise Resiliency & Spending Survey Wave 5, June 2023
Why the future is hybrid, multicloud
Canadian organizations are deploying workloads (applications and infrastructure) across on-premises and cloud environments. This an outcome of several factors, ranging from security, cost, business disruption, as well as data sovereignty, industry compliance and regulation requirements. Canadian organizations aim to achieve several external and internal business objectives by operating hybrid, multicloud environments.
Figure 2: Top externally facing business objectives
What are the top three externally facing business outcomes shaping your digital infrastructure strategy over the next two years?
Reduce overall cost of doing business
42%
Support more personalized, omnichannel customer engagement
41%
Respond to specific crisis-driven requirements
37%
Speed new applications to market
35%
Create differentiated digital business offerings
35%
Improve distributor/partner engagement
35%
Reduce friction across supply chains
25%
Source: IDC Canada ITAP N5 2022, August 2022
Figure 3: Top internally facing business objectives
What are the top three externally facing business outcomes shaping your digital infrastructure strategy over the next two years?
Improve internal staff productivity and efficiency, including remote work
47%
Consistent cybersecurity and data protection across all locations and geographies
45%
IT response to unexpected business conditions
40%
Data privacy and regulatory compliance
40%
Maintain mission critical legacy application viability
37%
Reduce time it takes to make IT resources available to the business
31%
Reduce cost of IT as a percent of overall cost of doing business
28%
Source: IDC Canada ITAP N5 2022, August 2022
To deploy and manage hybrid, multicloud environments, Canadian organizations need to build a strategy around five main factors: portability, observability, manageability, resiliency and security. By doing so, they are able to better manage, control and govern an increasingly complex environment. However, there is also the added challenge around whether they have the right type of skills and capabilities to run these environments, or if they need to lean toward partners who can help address these five main factors, all while simplifying management and governance of these environments.
Key hybrid cloud trends
Key trends shaping this hybrid cloud world include:
OPTIMIZATION OF CLOUD SPEND: The adoption of cloud services has enabled organizations to move away from capital expenses (CAPEX) to operational expenses (OPEX) both at a software and infrastructure level. However, given the current economic environment, there is an increased focus on utilization of cloud spend and a growing trend towards cloud optimization, resulting in the adoption of FinOps practices. Like security, FinOps is also a shared responsibility model between customers and vendors.
MEETING SUSTAINABILITY GOALS: Environmental, social and governance (ESG) is an emerging business imperative – and often a board-level priority – whereby organizations reduce their environmental impact or footprint. Canadian organizations need to invest in solutions that will help them operationalize sustainability use cases and drive business value.
In addition to cloud optimization and sustainability, cloud enables organizations to further progress in their adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) and the adoption of generative AI (GenAI), which have both given rise to the exploration of new use cases.
PROGRESS IN ADOPTION OF INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT): Canadian organizations are investing in edge computing solutions to better leverage their IoT workloads. This is one of the many trends as organizations move away from their reliance on traditional data centre investments.
RISE OF GENERATIVE AI: Interest in large language models (LLM) has brought AI back to the forefront of organizational priorities. GenAI has further fueled interest in new use cases, but it has also brought up concerns around intellectual property and ethics.
Investing in hybrid, multicloud environments can provide benefits around application and infrastructure modernization, meeting security and regulatory requirements and providing the platform to help organizations become a digital business. Canadian organizations need to address various aspects in deploying and running hybrid cloud environments to progress in their digital business ambitions.