Security, Skills, and Compliance Concerns Impede Success of Hybrid Cloud

New global market research from IBM revealed that more than 77% of respondents have adopted a hybrid cloud approach which can help drive digital transformation. Yet the majority of responding organizations are struggling with the complexity to make all their cloud environments work together.

As organizations face skills gaps, security challenges, and compliance obstacles, less than one-quarter of respondents across the globe manage their hybrid cloud environments holistically - which can create blind spots and put data at risk. The IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud was created to help organizations map their cloud transformation and empower them to self-classify their progress. Built on a foundation that leverages insights from experienced cloud professionals, enterprises can use the Index to gain measurable metrics that can help quantify their progress and uncover areas of opportunity and growth.

The Index consisted of more than 3,000 business and technology decision-makers from 12 countries and across 15 industries including financial services, manufacturing, government, telecommunications, and healthcare, to understand where organizations are advancing, or merely emerging, on their transformation journeys. It points to a strong correlation between hybrid cloud adoption and progress in digital transformation.

In fact, 71% of those surveyed think it's difficult to realize the full potential of a digital transformation without having a solid hybrid cloud strategy in place. At the same time, only 27% of those surveyed possess the necessary characteristics to be considered "advanced" in their transformation. According to the research, businesses believe ensuring compliance in the cloud is currently too difficult - especially as we see enforcement of regulatory and compliance requirements heat up across the globe. While businesses have embraced a variety of security techniques to secure workloads in the cloud, security concerns still remain. As organizations face the realities of a talent shortage, they are failing to implement a holistic hybrid cloud strategy - which can create gaps in security and compliance and cause risk across cloud environments.

When it comes to managing their cloud applications, 69% of respondents say their team lacks the skills needed to be proficient. This is a major roadblock to innovation, with more than a quarter of respondents saying skills and talent shortages are impeding their business's cloud objectives. The effects don't stop here - these limitations are also preventing organizations from leveraging the power of partnerships. More than one-third of respondents say a lack of technical skills is holding them back from integrating ecosystem partners into cloud environments. This challenge is even greater in the US, where nearly 40% admit to this lack of skills - pointing to the need for talent.

While more than 90% of responding financial services, telecommunications, and government organizations have adopted security tools such as confidential computing capabilities, multifactor authentication, and more, gaps remain that are preventing organizations from driving innovation. In fact, 32% of overall respondents cite security as the top barrier for integrated workloads across environments and more than one-quarter of respondents agree security concerns present a roadblock to achieving their cloud business goals.

Security concerns can even hold organizations back from unlocking the full potential of partnerships. As potential security gaps can cause third and fourth-party risks to loom, respondents say data governance (49%) and cybersecurity (47%) are the top challenges to fully integrating their business ecosystem into the cloud. In Brazil, cyber threats are an even greater concern to ecosystem innovation -- 51% say cybersecurity risks pose a major challenge for businesses that want to integrate business ecosystem partners into cloud environments.

With regulations on the rise, so too are compliance challenges. 53% of respondents believe that ensuring compliance in the cloud is currently too difficult and nearly one-third cite regulatory compliance issues as a key barrier to integrating workloads across private and public IT environments. In financial services, for example, more than a quarter of respondents agree that meeting industry requirements are holding them back from fully achieving their cloud objectives. These challenges span the globe and are especially prevalent in countries such as Singapore, China, India, and Japan.