More critical enterprise apps to be located outside of centralized public cloud: Report

Nearly half (50%) of critical enterprise applications are expected to be located outside of centralised public cloud locations in the next 3-4 years, according to a new report by market research firm Gartner published on Monday. 
 
In addition to ERP, other examples of critical enterprise applications include CRM (customer relationship management) and SCM (supply chain management) applications, as well as messaging applications and legacy systems. 
 
Dennis Smith, a Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, stated, “Enterprises are starting to explore placement options for workloads that have not yet migrated to the public cloud. These workloads account for about 70% of all workloads, but the increasing number of vendors, technologies, and overlapping markets makes it challenging to determine the best infrastructure choice for each organisation's unique circumstances and needs.” 
 
There are several options available for enterprises seeking infrastructure services for their on-premises workloads. These options range from vendors' server virtualisation offerings to comprehensive services provided by public cloud providers. 
 
To determine the most suitable placement strategies, Gartner recommends that tech leaders evaluate infrastructure requirements and adopt hybrid capabilities. 
 
“Enterprises require hybrid capabilities, and they always will,” said Smith. “While public clouds offer many benefits such as innovation, agility, and scalability, their usefulness can be limited when deployed outside the locations chosen by public cloud providers.” 
 
Whether it's a distributed hybrid infrastructure, which addresses the limitations of traditional on-premises infrastructure and provides the benefits of a cloud operating model, or container management solutions like Kubernetes platforms, cluster fleet management, and serverless offerings, or DevOps platforms that support continuous integration/continuous delivery, all of these markets exist outside of server virtualisation and are related to data centre infrastructure, according to Gartner. 
 
“Enterprises will need to navigate the differences and overlaps across these markets to determine the appropriate placement for their workloads,” said Smith. “This includes identifying different personas, clarifying their requirements across both the cloud-native infrastructure and application developer affinity vectors, and mapping them to the appropriate market.” 
 
Gartner researchers also noted the importance of selecting the right partner as the cloud computing market and data centre infrastructure continue to evolve and interest in migrating workloads grows. Smith emphasized the need to conduct a thorough analysis of use cases and identify the core characteristics and capabilities required to choose the correct infrastructure solution. 
 
Many data centres are also expected to transition from the ownership-based approach to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model in the near future. A report by Allied Industry Research in September of last year projected that the worldwide data centre industry would grow to $517.17 billion by 2030. 
 
By transitioning from on-premises data centres to the cloud, businesses can offload much of the effort involved in running a data centre, as the cloud provides access to compute, storage, and networks as a commodity. Additionally, as data is consumed and created at the edge more and more, data centres will serve more devices at the edge in the future.