Information technology professionals are increasingly migrating critical applications, storage and databases to the cloud in an effort to harness cost efficiencies, service availability and reliability. However, this movement holds the potential to increase challenges based on infrastructure complexity, an IT skills gap and lack of control/visibility into performance.
Conducting a December 2016 survey, IT management software company SolarWinds compiled “SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2017: Portrait of a Hybrid IT Organization” — a snapshot of the effect that cloud integration had on agencies.
In this annual study of the IT industry, SolarWinds found 96 percent of the 75 U.S. and Canadian public sector IT practitioners, managers and directors surveyed reported a transfer of applications to the cloud within the last year, despite fewer than 40 percent of their IT budgets being allocated to cloud. Even though nearly half of the respondents say their organizations spend 70 percent of their budgets supporting traditional, on-premises IT environments, the shift to new internal/external strategies for increased return on investment continues.
Piecemeal progress, however, has resulted in 65 percent of respondents saying their organizations use up to three cloud providers, creating complexities that are compounded by the challenge of inadequate cloud skills sets cited as an issue by 63 percent of surveyed professionals.
The need for new training — particularly in data analytics and monitoring/management tools and metrics — has resulted in the hiring/reassigning of IT personnel in 57 percent of the organizations represented, requiring professionals to embrace new skills and potentially alter their career path.
SolarWind’s 2017 findings can be explored on its website with an interactive index offering insights into the data.
Survey: Cloud disrupting federal IT workforce
