Barracuda Networks, a DataLink partner, has released key findings from a report titled “Future Shock: The Cloud Is the New Network”.

The research surveyed global IT decision makers to capture their experiences with, and attitudes about, moving infrastructure to the public cloud, concerns restricting adoption, and the security and networking solutions being implemented to overcome them.

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The survey includes responses from 750 executives, individual contributors, and team managers with responsibility for or knowledge of their organization’s cloud infrastructure. They came from organizations of all sizes and across a broad range of sectors, in EMEA, APAC and the U.S.

Overall, the study indicates that while adoption rates for public cloud continue to grow, security is still the number one roadblock, which is understandable considering the volume and variety of threats organizations face today.

Takeaways from the report include:

• On average, organizations currently have 45% of IT infrastructure running in the public cloud.
• Respondents expect to see an estimated 76% of IT infrastructure running in the public cloud in five years.
• Security is the No. 1 concern restricting faster adoption of public cloud.
• 70% of respondents say security concerns restrict their organization’s adoption of public cloud.
• Security concerns include the security of public cloud infrastructure, the impact of cyber-attacks, and the security of applications deployed in public cloud.
• 75% of respondents have already been targeted by a cyber-attack.
• Integrations/network is the No. 2 concern with public cloud adoption.
• These concerns include integrating public cloud with legacy technologies, better integration with private cloud, and enhanced integration with on-premises infrastructure.
• Secure software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) fully integrated into public cloud is the solution of choice.
• 23% of respondents have already deployed SD-WAN, with another 51% either in the process of deploying or expecting to deploy within the next 12 months.
• SD-WAN is being used by more than half of those who have added security to their public cloud.

As more IT infrastructure moves to public cloud, cloud providers will offer more native network capabilities, and public cloud will expand to include more network functionality. The vast majority of organizations need their security vendors to offer advanced security and cloud connectivity tightly integrated with the major cloud platforms.

Does your business have concerns about moving infrastructure to the cloud? Contact us today at 410.729.0440 or sales@DataLinkTech.com.