CIO Cybersecurity Strategies Increasingly Rely on ‘Multi-Cloud’

Enterprises are progressively moving their workloads to multiple cloud (multi-cloud) providers, migrating their mission-critical applications to an environment that facilitates performance, management and scalability. This novel strategy shifts focus away from cutting costs and towards increased performance and security, while enabling organizations to stay innovative and competitive, new data shows.

86% of enterprises have adopted a multi-cloud strategy, and as many as 60% are moving “mission-critical” apps to the cloud, according to a global survey of 727 cloud technology decision makers at businesses with more than 1,000 employees.

Commissioned by Virtustream and conducted by Forrester Consulting, the July 2018 study outlines how shifting business priorities are driving enterprises to adopt multi-cloud strategies.

The 86 percent of respondents who described their current cloud strategy as multi-cloud cited “performance” and “innovation” as key drivers behind their approach, easily beating cost savings as a top measure of success.

“In addition, the study finds that 60 percent of enterprises are now moving or have already moved mission-critical applications to the public cloud,” according to the report.

IT leaders showed a diverse set of uses for multi-cloud platforms. Many, if not most, agreed that a multi-cloud approach yields benefits such as improved IT infrastructure management and flexibility (33 percent), better IT cost management overall (33 percent), and improved security and compliance (30 percent).

The study further uncovered that enterprises have developed a preference for deeper levels of help and support when choosing a cloud vendor. And IT professionals are more involved in choosing a vendor (52 percent). In 34 percent of the cases, that IT pro is the Chief Information Officer (CIO).

The roles of the CIO and CSIO have been increasingly in the spotlight in recent years, and even more so in the past 12 months, thanks to a continuously more complex regulatory system. Even CEOs are now beginning to shoulder the burden of the organization’s cybersecurity strategy, with many studies suggesting that good communication between CEOs and CSIOs will be key to achieving cyber resilience.