New CDW Research Report Showcases Trends in Cloud Technologies

“Previously, many organizations took their on-premises bad habits and moved them to the cloud,” says Roger Haney, CDW’s chief architect for software-defined infrastructure, in the report. “The people who are starting to see benefits are the ones who have gone from lift-and-shift activities to lift-and-improve activities. Then there’s still a whole step to go, in which we modernize their workloads and move people into a cloud-native mindset.”

The research report also dives into challenges to cloud management efforts, such as lack of cloud governance or on-staff cloud skills. This is one area in which many K–12 respondents struggled; the majority rely on third-party experts and cloud management platforms in their environments. Visibility into cloud spending also could use improvement across industries, as only 47% of respondents reported being very confident in their ability to track the costs of their public and private cloud systems.

Finally, the report highlights the complex relationship between the cloud and security. While many organizations have undergone cloud repatriation due to security concerns, nearly half of respondents cite improved security as a major business benefit from public cloud investment.

“People now understand how cloud security works. It’s much more of a whitelist security capability,” Haney says. “You have to define what you allow through instead of what you deny. As people start to understand it, they see that it works differently, but it works just as well.”

DISCOVER: More findings from the 2024 CDW Cloud Computing Research Report here.