IT and business process automation growing with cloud architectures
Many organizations are starting to realize the benefits of increased scale and velocity of application deployment in their businesses, according to F5 Networks.
This value, however, can bring significant complexity as organizations maintain legacy infrastructure while increasingly relying on multiple public and private clouds, implement modern application architectures, and face an evolving and sophisticated threat landscape.
At the same time, organizations are adopting more application services designed to accelerate deployment in public cloud and container-native environments, like service mesh and ingress control.
App services requirements evolving
Survey data indicates this trend will accelerate as organizations become proficient in harnessing the data their application ecosystem delivers—creating advanced analytics capabilities and better business outcomes.
The survey shows that as companies manage legacy, multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud, and modern architectures to deliver applications, their requirements for app services are also evolving.
To address limited skill sets and integration challenges, organizations are choosing open ecosystems that offer standardization. Respondents prize application services that are both secure and easy to use.
Matured IT and business process optimization initiatives
80% of organizations are executing on digital transformation – with increasing emphasis on accelerating speed to market. As organizations progress through digital transformation initiatives, IT and business process optimization initiatives mature.
Many organizations have moved beyond the basics of business process automation and are now scaling their digital footprint with cloud, containers, and orchestration. This in turn is driving the creation of new ecosystems and massive growth in API call volumes.
87% of orgs are multi-cloud, most still struggle with security
Organizations are leveraging the public cloud to participate in industry ecosystems, take advantage of cloud-native architectures, and deliver applications at the speed of the business.
However, organizations are much less confident in their ability to withstand an application-layer attack in the public cloud versus an on-premises data center. This discrepancy illustrates a growing need for easy-to-deploy solutions that can ensure consistent security across multiple environments.
73% of orgs are automating the network to boost efficiency
Unsurprisingly, given the primary drivers of digital transformation – IT and business process optimization—the majority of organizations are automating the network.
Despite challenges, organizations are gaining proficiency and moving toward continuous deployment with more consistent automation across all key pipeline components: app infrastructure, app services, network, and security.
69% of orgs using 10 or more application services
As newer cloud-native application architectures mature and scale, a higher percentage of organizations are deploying related app services such as ingress control and service discovery both on premises and in the public cloud. A modern application landscape requires modern app services to support scale, security, and availability requirements.
IT operations still responsible for app services
63% of organizations still place primary responsibility for app services with IT operations, yet more than half of those surveyed are also moving to DevOps-inspired teams.
Operations and infrastructure teams continue to shoulder primary responsibility for selecting and deploying application services. However, as organizations expand their cloud- and container-native app portfolios, DevOps groups are taking more responsibility for app services.