Multi-cloud strategies are emerging as a dominant part of organisations’ long-term IT roadmaps.

This is according to a study by IT services firm Ensono in which 500 full-time professionals across the UK and US with cloud procurement decision-making power were surveyed.

Bryan Doerr, executive VP of Product and Technology, said:

“With nearly half of respondents indicating they’ve chosen a new provider in the last year, it’s clear that shares of the cloud market are completely up for grabs between the major providers. What’s most important for organisations right now is investing in the right cloud strategy for their IT workloads.”

More than pricing or vendor incentives, security and technical requirements are top drivers of cloud decision-making, according to the study. More than half of respondents (56%) indicated that security considerations have a “significant impact” on the final decision when choosing a provider. In addition to organizations moving toward multi-cloud strategies, private cloud environments remain important to organizations attempting to make optimal workload-to-cloud placement decisions.

Some of the key findings from the survey include:

• Microsoft Azure ranks as the most popular public cloud provider among respondents (58%), followed by Google Cloud (41%), IBM (40%) and AWS (38%). However, only 1% said they have always had the same cloud provider or platform.
• Nearly half (46%) of respondents indicated they have chosen a new provider or platform within the last year — and more than a quarter (26%) have done so in the past six months.
• Only 1% said they have always had the same cloud provider or platform.
• Currently, 42% of respondents are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy.
• The overwhelming majority of private cloud users (80%) said better information security was the reason for using a private cloud environment.
• 89% of healthcare organizations and 81% of public sector respondents say they will continue to have a need for private cloud in the next five years.