Multicloud is the new reality in enterprise technology according to a study from 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, commissioned by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The study collected information from 1,500 respondents at enterprises—organizations with more than 1,000 full-time employees in North America or more than 500 in other regions—about how they use the cloud within their organization and found that almost every cloud journey is now becoming a multicloud journey. Read the full report here.

In recent years, cloud has become nearly synonymous with IT as enterprises seek increased business agility and improved operational efficiency from the technology they use. While these trends have existed for some time, more than 90 percent of respondents agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a strong driver of greater interest and investment in cloud technology. As organizations faced new challenges such as increased levels of remote work and collaboration with new business partners and suppliers, they adopted a multicloud strategy to gain the flexibility and scalability they needed for this new reality.

“The ‘one-stop-shop’ mentality has died when it comes to the cloud. Instead, multicloud is the reality of enterprise technology environments as these organizations seek to get the right mix of solutions and capabilities they need to operate effectively,” said Melanie Posey, research director, Cloud & Managed Services Transformation at 451 Research. “Multicloud is here to stay, and enterprises are choosing this model for the benefits it provides for a range of different business and operational requirements, like business agility or access to best-of-breed technology.”

Key findings from the study include:

Almost every cloud journey is multicloud

• 98 percent of enterprises surveyed are using or plan to use at least two cloud infrastructure providers and 31 percent are using four or more.
• 96 percent reported they are using or plan to use at least two cloud application providers (Software-as-a-Service), with 45 percent using cloud applications from five or more providers.
• This multicloud strategy allows IT departments to meet the specific technology needs of different teams across the organization.

Data sovereignty and cost optimization are driving demand for multicloud strategies

• The top two drivers of multicloud strategies in enterprises are data sovereignty (41 percent) and cost optimization (40 percent).
• Other drivers of multicloud strategies include business agility and innovation (30 percent), best of breed cloud services and applications (25 percent) and cloud vendor lock-in concerns (25 percent).
• Multicloud strategies give enterprises more control over where and how their data is stored and used, while also ensuring businesses can control the costs of their cloud operations by adjusting which services they use from different providers.

Enterprise organizations are proactively planning multicloud strategies for the future

• Data redundancy (54 percent) is the most anticipated future use case, followed by data mobility (49 percent) and cost optimization across public clouds (42 percent).
• IT departments also plan to use multicloud strategies for risk mitigation for the entire IT environment (40 percent) and geographic expansion or global service delivery (38 percent).
• The fact that IT departments are planning multicloud strategies shows that they see multicloud as a way to get ahead of their technology needs, instead of simply a tactic to react to crises.

“Multicloud is here, whether enterprises are ready for it or not. Business mergers can turn even the most stable of IT strategies into a multicloud environment overnight,” said Leo Leung, vice president, OCI and Oracle Technology. “Whether IT teams are starting their multicloud plans from scratch or already have an implementation in place but want to add best-of-breed cloud services, OCI’s distributed cloud can help. With the recent introduction of MySQL HeatWave on AWS and Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure, customers have even more capabilities to help their multicloud strategies succeed.”

This research validates the approach OCI has taken with its distributed cloud and management offerings, which earned Oracle recognition as a leader in the recent Omdia Universe: Hybrid and Multicloud Management Solution, 2022–23 report (November 2022). Read a complimentary version of the report here (PDF).

Methodology

The survey data used in this report was collected by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, and commissioned by Oracle. The global survey was fielded in the third quarter of 2022 and is based on a cross-industry sample of 1,500 enterprise respondents in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. For the purposes of this survey, “enterprise” is defined as an organization with more than 1,000 full-time employees (North America) or more than 500 full-time employees (other geographic regions).

About OCI’s Distributed Cloud

OCI’s distributed cloud offers customers the benefits of cloud with greater control over data residency, locality, and authority, even across multiple clouds. OCI’s distributed cloud features the following:

• Multicloud: OCI’s multicloud capabilities such as Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure and MySQL HeatWave give customers the choice to pick the best cloud provider for their applications and databases.
• Hybrid cloud: OCI delivers hybrid cloud services on-premises via Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer and manages infrastructure in over 60 countries.
• Public cloud: Today, OCI operates 41 OCI regions in 22 countries, with 9 more planned, including two sovereign cloud regions for the EU.
• Dedicated cloud: OCI delivers dedicated regions for customers to run all Oracle cloud services in their own datacenters, and Oracle Alloy will enable partners to customize the cloud services and experience for their customers.