Admins responsible for managing their organization’s VMware vRealize Automation (vRA) may seem a bit anxious these days. That anxiety may grow over the course of the next 11 months leading up to September 2022.

Why?

If you run vRA, there’s a 98% chance that your organization is still running vRA 7, according to our newest CloudBolt Industry Insights (CII) research. VMware announced earlier in 2021 that it would stop supporting vRA 7 in September 2022. If you’re in the 2% that has already moved to vRA 8, then congrats, the decision won’t cause you to get more gray hairs.

But otherwise, your enterprise has a big decision to make, and one that according to this new survey, has been put off to a point in the future that could leave you dangerously at risk.

In May to July 2021, CloudBolt commissioned a global survey leveraging Pulse Research’s proprietary platform and vast IT audience. The survey was opened to companies of all sizes and 200+ responses were collected from vRA customers globally. The distribution of titles for respondents ended up being Director (56%), VP (27%), and CXO (17%). They answered a series of 11 vRA-specific questions, from which an interesting picture clearly emerged.

We’ve gathered the findings into our 4^th CII report of 2021, The Truth About First-Generation Cloud Management Platforms: A Focus on VMware vRealize Automation.

The Key Findings of Our CII vRA Report

Here are the topline findings of our research on vRA:

• vRA 8 has been available since October 2019, yet only 2% have deployed it.
• The top 3 problems with vRA revolve around integrations: the enormous amount of custom code required, major releases cause huge re-writes, and low to no visibility of what flows through integrations.
• 59% of vRA customers have more than half of all their integrations custom coded; almost all (92%) custom code at least a quarter of their integrations.
• 68% cited the ability to integrate with multiple solutions and tools as the single most important improvement vRA can make.
• The top 2 reasons companies cite for wanting to leave vRA: pain of migrating to vRA, and pressure to buy “Enterprise” edition to maintain current capabilities (which is nearly double the cost of other editions).
• 79% of vRA customers say they’ll migrate to vRA 8 sometime in the next 12 months, with only 57% being more definitive and saying they will migrate in 2022 specifically.
• 91% of vRA customers currently use, plan to use, or want to use Terraform for Infrastructure-as-Code, which will lead to more integrations.

What the Findings Mean for vRA Customers

Ultimately, these key findings from the research can be grouped into three primary themes:

• Migration hesitancy surrounding vRA 8
• Top challenges/issues associated with vRA 7
• Augmenting with other tools to make vRA better

VMware provided a revolutionary technology at its outset, virtualizing datacenter infrastructure in a way that changed the IT industry forever. And yet, VMware and its vRA product specifically, may be struggling with the New Cloud Order.

Gone are the days of one public cloud and all workloads being on VMware. Organizations want to offer true self-service across multiple clouds and virtualization platforms. They want Terraform, they want CI/CD/CIT, they want DevOps. These are challenging requirements – even for a market leader.

We will discuss more of the specific issues raised by our survey in subsequent blog posts.

Welcome to this week’s edition of CloudBolt’s Weekly CloudNews!

Here are the blogs we’ve posted this week:

• Beyond the Boardroom: Sustainability and the C-Suite

With that, onto this week’s news:

Amazon, Google and Microsoft team up on cloud computing principles

Carrie Mihalcik, CNET, Oct. 1, 2021

“Amazon, Google and Microsoft on Friday unveiled a new industry initiative that aims to establish basic commitments and protections for companies that store and process data in the cloud. The tech giants, along with several other enterprise companies, have agreed to a series of principles related to customer data and government regulations.

‘Through this initiative, we commit to working with governments to ensure the free flow of data, to promote public safety, and to protect privacy and data security in the cloud,’ Microsoft wrote in a LinkedIn post about the new initiative, called the Trusted Cloud Principles.”

How cloud computing impacts technology evolution

David Lithicum, Info World, Oct. 2, 2021

“The cloud has been around in one form or another for about 20 years now. Although cloud looks much different than it did back in the days that were dominated by software as a service, the rise of platform as a service and infrastructure as a service has made the concept much more powerful and useful for enterprises. The evolution of cloud technology is affecting all technology. The era of the PC got us to client/server. The growth of distributed computing got us service-oriented architecture. What has the rise of the cloud got us?

Faster procurement has led to an experimentation approach. Years ago, hardware and software procurement cycles took months—maybe it’s the same today depending on whom you work for. With public clouds, we can now “play” with technology to determine if a solution offers true value or not. No matter if it’s artificial intelligence, an accounting system, data analytics, or another very expensive system, we now have the ability to try them on the cheap, moving through solutions that don’t work to find one that does. Try this with traditional hardware and software and you’ll find that you break the budget quickly.”

The Future of Cloud Security in Financial Services

Anand Singh, Payments Journal, Oct. 4, 2021

“There has been a steady increase in adoption of cloud computing in the financial services sector over the past few years. This trend is only going to accelerate. According to a study by Cornerstone Advisors, 41% of the FIs have already done so and 20% are planning to invest and/or implement in 2021, and 30% have discussed at the board or executive team level.”

We’re here to help you anywhere on your hybrid and multi-cloud journey. Request a demo today.

Welcome to this week’s edition of CloudBolt’s Weekly CloudNews!

Here are the blogs we’ve posted this week:

• Why Sustainability Matters in the New Cloud Order

With that, onto this week’s news:

Move faster with continuous security scanning in the cloud 

David Lithicum, InfoWorld, Sept. 24, 2021

“These days cloud application developers are also security engineers. Who did not see this coming, given that application-level security is no longer an option? Also, we are pushing developers to build applications at scale, meaning they are becoming ops engineers and database engineers as well as security engineers, which is scary.

The fact that most developers are not security experts is not lost on me. This has led to devsecops practices where developers are given training, tools, and processes to build and deploy more secure cloud-based applications. Of course, anyone who has attempted to implement that kind of cultural change has found that it can’t be done in weeks. It takes months and sometimes years. Emerging concepts out there may help things along. Cloud-native application protection (CNAP) platforms can continuously scan workloads and configurations to find and resolve security issues. They do this during application development, application testing, and application deployment.”

Not Optimizing Cloud Computing Spend Costs Enterprises $24B

Sean Michael Kerner, ITProToday, Sept. 22, 2021 

“Organizations around the world are not properly optimizing cloud spend to the tune of $24B in missed savings, according to new research from S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 451 Research. There are myriad options for organizations in terms of different options for cloud resources, with some being more expensive than others. Of note, the report found that 36% of organizations are paying for cloud resources at on-demand rates, as opposed to other cost effective options that are less expensive, such as reserved instance pricing. According to the report, only 17% of organizations are currently using hybrid or multi-cloud approaches to mix providers to deliver the same application. According to Rogers, by using a multi-cloud approach for an application, it is possible for an organization to optimize costs.

​​Improving cloud cost optimization isn’t just about reducing costs. Rogers noted that cloud costs go up for two reasons – either organizations are consuming more resources to deliver business value, or they are accidentally consuming more because of poor governance. He emphasized that if cloud costs are growing to improve business value , that isn’t necessarily a problem, because if the organization is getting more revenue as a result then the additional cost of cloud doesn’t really matter.”

Google, AWS, IBM, Microsoft and Morgan Stanley partner for a new cloud data framework

Jonathan Greig, ZDNet, Sept. 28, 2021

“Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Microsoft and other major tech giants have joined forces with the EDM Council — a cross-industry trade association for data management and analytics — to create the Cloud Data Management Capabilities (CDMC) framework. More than 100 companies worked on the project, which involved developing a comprehensive set of cloud data management capabilities, standards and best practices for cloud, multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud implementations while also incorporating automated key controls for protecting sensitive data.

‘The EDM Council is honored to have facilitated the development of the CDMC framework to provide an auditable and certified cloud data management best practice available as a free license for all industries,’ said John Bottega, the president of the EDM Council. The CDMC was initially developed with the financial sector in mind but was expanded to include every industry. Evren Eryurek, the director of product management for data analytics at Google Cloud, said cloud acceleration has skyrocketed as companies of all sizes and industries become more reliant on data to drive transformation, forcing businesses to adapt quickly.”

We’re here to help you anywhere on your hybrid and multi-cloud journey. Request a demo today.

Welcome to this week’s edition of CloudBolt’s Weekly CloudNews!

Here are the blogs we’ve posted this week:

• Solution Diversity For Hybrid Cloud in Focus for CloudBolt Summer Release
• Greener Clouds: How IT is Putting Sustainability Front and Center

With that, onto this week’s news:

Whole cloud spending to surpass $1.3 trillion by 2025 

HelpNetSecurity, Sept. 22, 2021

“Given its central role in the future enterprise, IDC forecasts “whole cloud” spending – total worldwide spending on cloud services, the hardware and software components underpinning the cloud supply chain, and the professional/managed services opportunities around cloud services – will surpass $1.3 trillion by 2025 while sustaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.9%.

‘In today’s digital-first world, business outcomes and innovation are increasingly tied to the ability to develop and use innovative technologies and services anywhere, as quickly as possible. Cloud is the foundation for meeting this need,” said Rick Villars, group VP, Worldwide Research at IDC. ‘Entire industries want to intelligently leverage data to their advantage and can do so because they have faster access to digital technologies built on a cloud foundation.’”

Technology skills in demand, 2021: cloud, with a twist of open source 

Joe McKendrick, ZDNet, Sept. 20, 2021

“Technology skills hiring is up, and the opportunities are in those skills that are a fusion of cloud and open source technologies. But can employers rise to the challenge of facilitating skills development in both areas? 

This question was addressed in a recent survey report, covering 750 open source professionals and 200 hiring managers, published by The Linux Foundation and edX, which shows hiring is rebounding in the wake of the pandemic. Fifty percent of employers surveyed who stated they are increasing hires this year. There are significant challenges though, with 92% of managers reporting difficulty finding enough talent, as they also struggle to hold onto existing talent in the face of fierce competition. Furthermore, the rapid adoption of open source software is widening the skills gap in the market. This is especially true for cloud native application development and operations skills, topping the list of 46% of hiring managers.”

4 steps to incorporate security into hybrid cloud environments 

Yev Koup, Security Magazine, Sept. 16, 2021

“Digital transformations are best defined as digitizing business processes to solve problems and serve customers more efficiently through online channels. It can provide huge savings in infrastructure and admin costs, help to launch new apps faster and increase overall efficiency. For most businesses, moving to the cloud is the foundation of that transformation. 

Yet, a hybrid cloud infrastructure may be a better bet for some businesses. Done correctly, a hybrid approach could offer the ultimate in flexibility, cost efficiency and agility. Hybrid cloud combines public cloud workloads and infrastructure with on-premises workloads and infrastructure, enabling businesses to leverage the optimal mix of each deployment model. In fact, more than 90% of enterprises worldwide will be relying on a mix of on-premises/dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs by 2022, according to IDC research.”

We’re here to help you anywhere on your hybrid and multi-cloud journey. Request a demo today.

Sustainability. 

It’s a word you’ve no doubt seen and heard a lot, in the news, in the entertainment media, and probably increasingly, in your IT leadership role. But the level to which sustainability and green initiatives have made their mark in the IT world was unclear, until now. 

In 2021 we launched CloudBolt Industry Insights (CII), a clearinghouse for the most current, up-to-date information about where things stand in IT, hybrid cloud and digital transformation initiatives. We see a New Cloud Order converging where myopic, siloed approaches no longer cut it, and thoughts of where things are going is of tantamount importance. 

After exploring hybrid cloud, CI/CD and IaC, we decided to follow a different path for our third CII report. We wanted to learn: is sustainability just a buzzword in the IT world, or is it becoming a way of life? 

The results of our latest survey, The Truth About IT Sustainability: Paying More Green to Get More Green, which included over 250 responses from IT leaders in June/July 2021 across the world utilizing Pulse Research’s proprietary platform, showed without a glimmer of a doubt that sustainability is here to stay, impacts buying decisions and has the attention of C-suite and board-level decision makers. 

Are Greener Clouds the Future of Sustainability? 

Here’s a high-level view of our latest CII report findings:  

• 76% of IT leader respondents believe climate change is an existential threat to our world. 
• 79% of respondents indicate their IT departments are expected to help their companies achieve specific sustainability initiatives driven by the Board of Directors of the C-Suite. 
• 67% say they take a cloud vendor’s sustainability initiatives into consideration when deciding whether to do business with that vendor. 
• 8 in 10 indicate they’ll pay a premium to work with vendors who are pursuing and incorporating sustainability into their business model, with 45% saying that premium could be as much as 11-15% or more. 

What Sustainability Means to Us  

Conscience drives IT leaders and practitioners to be much more purposeful in the infrastructure choices they make, aiming to ensure a greener future for all. This stems from a firm belief that cloud infrastructure choices have a material impact on the environment. 

We at CloudBolt are striving to do our part – making our contribution by helping enterprises eliminate wasteful resource use and create the optimal infrastructure resource allocation addressing equally the needs of developers, operations, and security teams.  

In the process, companies can reduce private cloud server sprawl and public cloud vendors are able to right-size capacity to affect computing and cooling costs. 

But there is more to be done, and we would love to hear more about what your company is doing to help build a more sustainable world. Find us on Twitter and LinkedIn and let us know what you’re doing with the hashtag #greenerclouds.

Why sustainability has become more than a buzzword in IT. Learn more in CloudBolt Industry Insights.

Welcome to this week’s edition of CloudBolt’s Weekly CloudNews!

Here are the blogs we’ve posted this week:

• The Truth About Terraform and Hybrid Cloud

With that, onto this week’s news:

Remote work presents challenges for IT leaders

Security Magazine, Sept. 15, 2021

“Remote work has become the new normal for many businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase in working from home introduces new risks that IT professionals are struggling to manage with existing security tools, according to a new study. The 2021 Thales Access Management Index, a global survey of 2,600 IT decision makers, was conducted to better understand the new security risks and challenges caused by the rise of remote working and cloud transformation over the past year.

Of the IT leaders surveyed, six in 10 respondents said traditional security tools such as VPNs are the primary vehicle for employees accessing applications remotely. Almost half of respondents (44%) were not confident that their access security systems could scale effectively to secure remote work.”

​Gartner: IT skills shortage hobbles cloud, edge, automation growth

Michael Cooney, Network World, Sept. 13, 2021

“Gartner says the current paucity of skilled IT workers is foiling the adoption of cloud, edge computing, and automation technologies. In its “2021-2023 Emerging Technology Roadmap” based on surveying 437 global firms, Gartner found that IT executives see the talent shortage as the most significant barrier to deploying emerging technologies, including compute infrastructure and platform services, network security, digital workplace, IT automation, and storage.

IT executives surveyed cited talent availability as the main challenge for adopting IT automation (75%) and a significant amount of digital workplace technologies (41%). Lack of talent was cited far more often than other barriers, such as implementation cost (29%) or security risk (7%), according to a statement from Yinuo Geng, research vice president at Gartner.”

Infosys, Microsoft migrate Ausgrid’s infrastructure to Azure

Ben Moore, CRN, Sept. 14, 2021

“India-headquartered digital services provider Infosys and Microsoft have inked a multi-year deal to migrate NSW electricity provider Ausgrid’s IT infrastructure onto Azure .The goal is to improve the agility, security and resilience of business operations for Ausgrid, reducing the cost of ownership and improving the performance of its systems and applications, according to a statement from Infosys.

“With over 4 million Australians relying on our services every day, it is essential we are maintaining our high standard of reliability and connectivity, as well as delivering on the expectations of Australian communities,” said Ausgrid acting chief information officer Nick Crowe. Accelerating our cloud transformation journey in partnership with Infosys and Microsoft allows us to improve the reliability of the network, keep downward pressure on electricity prices and bring new services to market at speed and in a cost-effective manner.”

We’re here to help you anywhere on your hybrid and multi-cloud journey. Request a demo today.