Skills shortages hold back enterprises from reaching multicloud goals

Skills shortages are the most common reason why enterprises are struggling to realise their multicloud ambitions, suggests the third annual State of cloud strategy survey.

The Forrester Consulting poll, commissioned by cloud infrastructure automation firm HashiCorp, revealed high levels of interest in adopting and investing in multicloud technologies, but its findings also showed that enterprises are struggling to deliver on their multicloud plans because of staff recruitment and retention issues.

The survey specifically sought to see what impact “operational maturity” had on the ability of organisations to deliver on their multicloud strategies, and featured responses from nearly 1,000 technology practitioners working at companies from around the world.

In the context of the survey, operational maturity is defined by the combination of technological and organisational best practices each organisation had adopted, with 92% of high cloud maturity organisations claiming their move to multicloud is paying off.

HashiCorp’s findings showed that 73% of overall respondents to the poll said multicloud was helping them reach their business goals, while a further 19% expected to reach that point within the next year.

The poll also suggested high-maturity organisations trended towards having more successful multicloud deployments.

However, one frequently flagged barrier to multicloud success by organisations at all levels of maturity is the difficulties organisations face when trying to recruit and retain individuals with the skills needed to deliver on their cloud strategies.

“Respondents of all maturity levels noted that the lack of skilled cloud talent is the most common issue, hindering companies’ ability to operationalise multicloud. Mature organisations have a key advantage, however, with 74% saying their multicloud strategy helps them attract, motivate and retain talent,” said HashiCorp in a statement.

In keeping with the feedback shared in the recent financial results of hyperscale cloud giants, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), the survey also revealed an appetite among all respondents to find ways to optimise their cloud spending, against a backdrop of challenging macroeconomic conditions.

At the same time, however, more than half of respondents (56%) said they had stepped up the amount of money they invest in cloud over the course of the past year, and a similar proportion of mature organisations claimed their move to multicloud was helping them save money.  

Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO of HashiCorp, said the survey neatly served to highlight the impact operational maturity has on the ability of organisations to reach their cloud goals.

“This year’s State of cloud strategy survey showed meaningful differences between high-maturity organisations further in their cloud journeys and low-maturity organisations that have yet to standardise,” said Dadgar.

“While low-maturity organisations face difficulties in staffing, security and costs, high-maturity organisations are able to use their multicloud approach to attract and retain talent, implement platform teams, save money and improve security. The data confirm that as organisations progress along their cloud adoption journey, they realise important benefits that improve both technical and business outcomes.”