Cologne, Germany, 10 March 2021 – Today, the IT analyst firm techconsult – a part of the heise publishing group – and Cologne-based cloud provider gridscale have published the results of a comprehensive empirical survey on deployment scenarios, process models and the status quo of hybrid cloud and hyper-converged infrastructures (HCI) within next-generation IT operations free of charge..
For the first time, a market survey with the provocative question “Well equipped?” focuses on the special challenges of traditional SMEs and provides business and IT decision-makers with more than sixty pages of information and benchmarks for a future-proof cloud and data center strategy. The study was produced in partnership with the industry association EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e.V. and is freely available here.
Hybrid cloud infrastructures become the dominant form of deployment
Today, German SMEs are facing major challenges as well as a major modernisation push across all sectors. Previously successful business models are either being expanded or replaced by disruptive innovations, mobile digital working is becoming the standard and decades of experience and market presence are being replaced by AI, new technologies and smart services. Moreover, the Corona pandemic has significantly accelerated this development.
“This race cannot be won with traditional IT and monolithic architectures. We are already in the age of the hybrid and multi-cloud,” says Frank Schmeiler, responsible IT analyst at techconsult. “As a result, almost two-thirds of the companies surveyed are already looking at hyperconverged, and thus virtualized, IT infrastructures with unlimited flexibility.”
More than 150 SME executives and experts surveyed
But how well-prepared are companies actually, what challenges do IT managers have to face, and what do the benefits, use cases and proven process models look like when setting up cloud-based, hyper-converged infrastructures?
“SMEs in particular have until now rarely been surveyed on this matter,” explains Andreas Weiss, Director of EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e.V., expounding on the trade association’s support in conducting the study. “The answers from the more than 150 interviews show how great the pressure to act actually is and at the same time how great the need for information, clarification and assistance is.”
Corona pandemic as a warp drive for IT infrastructure modernisation
Also, many of the companies polled see themselves as not yet well positioned for a successful transformation to the cloud. More than a third of them complain about a lack of both resources and know-how and cannot cope with the management of hybrid IT infrastructures without external help and technologies such as HCI.
“Depending on the status quo of the company, the current pandemic either acts as a booster or as a fire accelerant for its business success,” adds Henrik Hasenkamp, CEO of gridscale GmbH as the initiator of the market survey. “This new study sheds light on the current conditions for German SMEs for the first time and provides companies with valuable orientation on the path toward modernising their IT infrastructure.”
The complete study is now available as an ePaper at gridscale.io/HybridCloud.
About hyper-converged infrastructures
“Hyper-converged infrastructure” (HCI) is an umbrella term for a fully virtualised operating environment and integrates server, storage and network components as well as virtualisation and management software in one system. Hyper-converged platforms use a software-defined approach to intelligently combine individual/distributed computing and storage resources and enable their execution and management on shared computing and storage resources.
Companies benefit from the same scalability and flexibility of a public cloud infrastructure without giving up controlover the hardware on their own premises (i.e. a private cloud). Using a uniform management model, services can be centrally managed and used in the private cloud, the public cloud or a hybrid mixed model. HCI solutions can thus be used flexibly in a company’s own data centre as well as in different cloud scenarios.
About gridscale
gridscale, IaaS and PaaS provider headquartered in Cologne, stands for easy-to-use and flexible cloud technologies. Via an intuitive interface, the IT infrastructure can be managed by people without in-depth IT know-how and a Kubernetes environment even facilitates the management of cloud-native workloads. Thousands of companies, agencies and managed service providers already rely on gridscale to implement and operate their digital projects – from high-traffic web shops to complex SaaS or enterprise IT solutions. White label options are available to resellers and with the gridscale software ‘Hybrid Core’ data center operators themselves can become cloud providers. gridscale with its about 100 employees is led by Henrik Hasenkamp and Marc Dittmann.
About techconsult
techconsult GmbH, founded in 1992, is one of the established analyst firms in Central Europe. The focus of strategy consulting is on the information and communication industry (ICT). Through years of standard and individual research, techconsult has a unique pool of information in the German-speaking world, both in terms of continuity and depth of information, and is thus an important consulting partner for CXOs as well as the IT industry when it comes to product innovation, marketing strategy and sales development.
About EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e.V.
EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e. V. is the association of the cloud computing industry. It is committed to acceptance and needs-oriented provision of cloud services on the German market. The association is in constant dialog with the partners of the European EuroCloud network. EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e. V. was founded in December 2009 and is affiliated with eco – Verband der Internetwirtschaft e. V.. Together, the associations exploit the greatest level of synergies possible to achieve maximum coverage of the relevant topics.
Press contact techconsult
techconsult GmbH
Baunsbergstraße 37
34131 Kassel
Tel.: +49-(0) 561-8109-0
info@techconsult.de
www.techconsult.de
Presse contact EuroCloud
EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e.V.
Lichtstr. 43h
50825 Köln
Tel..: +49 (0) 221 7000 48 0
info@eurocloud.de
www.eurocloud.de