Despite multicloud becoming the dominant IT architecture worldwide, nearly one-in-three respondents in the industry say private cloud is still their model of choice. New findings outlining healthcare industry respondents according to the cloud computing company Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey and research report, indicating that multicloud adoption is still in a growing phase.
“Multicloud is here to stay, but complexity and challenges remain as regulations drive many of healthcare organizations’ IT deployment decisions,” said Joseph Wolfgram, Healthcare CTO at Nutanix. “Regardless of where they are in their multicloud journeys, evolution to a hybrid multicloud IT infrastructure that spans a mix of private and public clouds with interoperability is underway and necessary for healthcare organizations to succeed.”
The report found that while 30% of respondents in the healthcare field said the private cloud was their IT setup for now, the move towards multicloud is expected to rise from its current rate of 27% to 51% in the next three years. The shift to multicloud as the dominant model for IT architecture would put healthcare in alignment with the growing sentiment that a mix of private and public clouds may be the best fit.
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Why is the move to multicloud important?
The issue of the industry being behind as a whole was nearly unanimous among those surveyed as 90% agree that addressing this challenge requires a hybrid multicloud model to maintain security, data integration, interoperability, security and cost. Every single respondent indicated that they had moved applications either to or from the cloud in the last year, citing data privacy and security as the primary reasons. But while nearly all agree the multicloud move would be beneficial from a number of angles, high regulatory standards in healthcare has led to the industry being slower to adopt changes such as these.
Multicloud is the go-to IT architecture for a number of reasons, but the simplest one is the flexibility afforded by this setup. Problems cited by those not yet in multicloud setups included:
- Integrating data across clouds (49%)
- Managing costs (48%)
- Performance challenges with network overlays (45%)
Tech priorities for the healthcare industry
A number of priorities are raised by Nutanix as part of their findings, as healthcare needs to advance its data processes. The main priorities for healthcare organizations over the next next 12-18 months according to Nutanix were:
- Adopting 5G (47%)
- AI/ML-based services (46%)
- Improving BC/DR (45%)
- Multicloud management (44%)
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Respondents to the survey also said that the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a more proactive approach when it comes to IT spending. The top expenditure areas in regards to IT fell into the categories of:
- Strengthening network security (62%)
- Utilizing AI-based self-service technology (60%)
- Upgrading existing IT infrastructure (48%)
Security is a big factor in the healthcare sector, as it was cited as one of the industries most likely to be vulnerable to hacking, and thus, it needs to be ready to protect its entire IoT suite in case of malware or ransomware attacks.
