Cloud Maturity

Lünendonk study: Cloud transformation changes IT sourcing

As a result of the trend towards cloud-first or cloud-too strategies, hybrid and multiple cloud environments are becoming the norm. However, this also increases the challenges with regard to governance, security and the orchestration of IT processes. In future, IT managers will therefore be looking even more closely for cooperation with IT sourcing consultancies, which will support them in the cloud transformation and the choice of provider. IT sourcing consultancies are therefore optimistic about the future. These are selected findings of the new Lünendonk Study 2022 "IT Strategies and Cloud Sourcing in the Course of Digital Transformation: The Market for IT Sourcing Consulting in Germany", which was reissued after a three-year break. Almost every second company already relies on a cloud-first strategy and thus prefers to procure cloud services. 13 percent of the companies surveyed even give preference to cloud-only, while 39 percent prefer a mix of cloud and on-premises through a cloud-to-o strategy. In this context, 84 percent of the companies state that the increasing use of cloud services has a major impact on their IT sourcing strategy.

The public cloud services of hyperscalers in particular are gaining in relevance for companies and organizations in order to increase the speed of the development of innovations and digital transformation. Although there are still reservations about the public cloud due to the DSGVO and concerns about possible data misuse, the majority of respondents expect these to diminish in the future - for example, because the benefits of cloud use increasingly outweigh the risks.

In order to avoid vendor lock-in and thus excessive dependence on cloud providers, or to meet regulatory requirements, 69 percent of the study participants use hybrid or multiple cloud environments. A further 24 percent are planning to build these, which very clearly underlines the trend towards cloud transformation.

However, the governance of different cloud providers leads to new challenges for IT: more than 90 percent of enterprises challenge the definition of cloud governance and the orchestration of the different cloud models.