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 4th 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:

What the Findings Mean for vRA Customers

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

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:

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:

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.

If you haven’t heard, CloudBolt has released its third CloudBolt Industry Insights (CII) report, this one focusing on the results of a survey of over 250 global IT leaders on the topics of sustainability and how to go green in the cloud world.

For enterprises today, sustainability is no longer a buzzword or a noble intention being perpetually punted into the future. Organizations are increasingly expected to put their money where their mouth is and make good on green intentions. State Street, one of the world’s largest investors, has announced it will use its $3 trillion investment arm to vote against the boards of big companies that lag behind on environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards.

We at CloudBolt know it is now everyone’s job to help leave the world a better place for generations to come. Yet, we also have day jobs to do. How far has the sustainability agenda reached the IT ranks? How important is sustainability in driving infrastructure investment decisions? Have we reached an inflection point in the New Cloud Order whereby rhetoric maps to revenue?

As a refresher, this is how we view the New Cloud Order at CloudBolt: old, siloed, myopic ways of doing business no longer cut it. Not when technology, tools, processes, and ideas change as rapidly as they do now.

Reordering of strategic priorities require comprehensive solutions and improvement in three key areas: automation, optimization, and integration. That’s where the New Cloud Order comes into play. It demands simplification of complexities using intelligent, agile, and interdependent approaches to vexing hybrid cloud problems. Self-service, cost and security optimization and simplifying integrations all play a factor here.

Sustainability + New Cloud Order, the Way of the Future

So, how does this tie into IT sustainability? As it turns out, IT has grown an environmental conscience, and a big one at that. Previously, cloud decisions were based on two concrete dimensions: Compute + Cost. A third dimension has emerged into the buying equation: Compute + Cost + CONSCIENCE. Conscience is playing an increasingly important role in selecting cloud providers based on the provider’s environmental commitment and their impact on carbon footprint.

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. This impact is now seen as an urgent imperative as the majority of IT leaders (76%) see climate change as an existential threat.

The rising tide raises all sustainable ships. Some issues transcend normal competitive boundaries. Sustainability is one of them. Whether we complement or compete, the most important thing is that everyone participating in the New Cloud Order contributes to lower carbon footprints and better conservation. No one company can solve it all. But together, through our fractional efforts, cloud as an industry can make an important difference.

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:

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:  

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:

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.

First conceived more than 25 years ago, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) is not a new concept. At its heart, it is designed to enable the modeling of infrastructure with code, empowering developers to design, implement, and deploy application infrastructure with known software best practices. The ability to treat infrastructure like code and use the same tools as any other software project ostensibly allows developers to rapidly deploy applications.

An emerging vendor in IaC is HashiCorp’s Terraform, which was introduced in 2015 and has rapidly grown a base of ardent users. Terraform’s co-founder and CTO recently called one of their releases “a milestone…designed to deliver stability, scalability, and interoperability.” He then asserted that “Terraform has emerged as the ‘lingua franca’ for infrastructure.”

While an interesting and thought-provoking statement, data collected as part of our recent CloudBolt Industry Insights report, The Truth About DevOps in the Hybrid Cloud Journey, uncovered a different story regarding Terraform in the context of hybrid cloud infrastructure management.

Leveraging Pulse Research’s proprietary platform and audience between May 7 and June 10, 2021, CloudBolt secured 200+ responses from senior titles (74% VP+) at large companies (>1,000 employees) around the world who had specific knowledge of IaC, Terraform and CI/CD within their organizations.

How the Enterprise Feels About Terraform and IaC Adoption

Here are some of the key takeaways on the IaC/Terraform portion of the report:

  • Fully 88% of respondents indicate that they are either using or considering using Terraform.
  • Only 5% of users in our survey are truly satisfied with Terraform. 75% are only “Somewhat Satisfied.”
  • 62% of respondents indicate that deployment of on-premises infrastructure via Terraform is challenging.
  • 90% state Terraform requires more custom-coded integrations to other critical tools and systems to work properly.
  • Skillsets are another challenge, with 39% pointing out they lack the specific and necessary Terraform expertise.
  • 74% state that they need a Cloud Management Platform (CMP) operating in conjunction with Terraform. 58% use DevOps tools like CI/CD or Kubernetes. 56% require configuration management tools like Ansible or Chef. And 51% said scripts.

Learn more in the full report here.

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:

With that, onto this week’s news:

An effective cloud strategy is a frame of mind, not a one-time transition 

Jen A. Miller, CIO Dive, Sept. 7, 2021

“The rush to the cloud during the start of the pandemic motivated companies sitting on the sidelines of digital transformation to get into the game. But moving to the cloud is a continuous process, not just a one-time, necessary, cost-saving action.

Two-thirds (65%) of enterprises saw up to a 10% cost savings due to moving to cloud, according to an Accenture survey of nearly 4,000 C-suite executives. However, six in ten executives do not actively manage and optimize it continuously, and 80% do not actively prioritize the use of cloud-native architectures, applications and data.”

Cloud adoption remains a top enterprise priority for 2021

Ian Barker, Beta News, Sept. 8, 2021

“According to a new report, in mid-sized to large enterprises 50 percent of the software applications being developed are cloud based and another 30 percent are expected to migrate to the cloud within the next two years. 83 percent of respondents state that cloud-based development and deployment is a top IT priority in 2021 for applications their company develops and deploys. The top three business drivers for moving applications to the cloud are: enabling a remote workforce, bringing technology to market faster, and increasing agility, with cost was ranked only a distant fourth.

But the study from Security Compass also highlights that organizations are struggling to develop cloud applications that meet security requirements and that integrate with existing on-premise technologies with 54 percent naming these as the top challenges. There’s also an increased case for automation, with 92 percent of enterprises that are developing over three quarters of their software applications in the cloud reporting an interest in solutions that automate proactive security and compliance processes.”

CISA releases the cloud security technical reference architecture and zero trust maturity model for public comment

Editorial Staff, Security Magazine, Sept. 8, 2021

“The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released the Cloud Security Technical Reference Architecture (TRA) and Zero Trust Maturity Model for public comment. As the federal government continues to expand past the traditional network perimeter, it is paramount that agencies implement data protection measures around cloud security and zero trust.

The TRA is designed to guide agencies’ secure migration to the cloud by explaining considerations for shared services, cloud migration, and cloud security posture management. CISA’s Zero Trust Maturity Model assists agencies in developing their zero trust strategies and implementation plans and presents ways in which various CISA services can support zero trust solutions across agencies.”

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