SUSE: ‘Why Today’s IT Leaders are Choosing Open Research’

Top Business Tech takes a closer look at the findings from SUSE‘s “Why Today’s IT Leaders are Choosing Open Research.”

UK IT Leaders are feeling the pinch to deliver results for their businesses through technology. A report by SUSE highlights “Why Today’s IT Leaders are Choosing Open Research”, which shows that IT leaders in the UK focus on simplifying business processes by harnessing the power of multi-cloud environments, high-performance computing and automated ai.

According to the report, 78% of IT leaders said they felt more pressured to deliver tangible outcomes for their businesses than they did 12 months ago. They cited that the most significant technology challenges were IT resource/staffing (43%), maintaining security and data access controls (35%) and maintaining service availability and performance (29%).

Interestingly, however, many of those who felt business pressure also felt optimistic that open-source innovation at the edge would help them solve their objectives, despite the UK being one of the lowest-scoring countries for excitement when questioned about the possibilities of edge computing. When SUSE looked more closely, they discovered vital concern about transformation, including control, management and security of their infrastructure and the change itself.

In the report, 82% of surveyed IT leaders agreed that open source enabled innovation at the edge, with 78% saying that it’s because open-sourced is cost-effective. However, despite this, 77% of survey participants believe that large organisations involved in open source will eventually erode confidence and trust within their community.

It’s clear that UK IT leaders believe non-stop IT and infrastructure stability is more important than ever, so perhaps it’s clear that hesitation to embrace transformation to open source, multi-cloud or edge computing results from pandemic disruption.  

The report by SUSE offered a few other standout figures that provided an interesting insight into the current world of UK IT Leaders. For the full breakdown, make sure to check out the report that highlights “Why Today’s IT Leaders are Choosing Open Research.”

Strategic priorities & pain points

  • 78% say they feel under more pressure to deliver tangible outcomes for the business than 12 months ago. The biggest technology challenges in the last 12 months include reduced IT resource/staffing (43%), maintaining security and data access controls (35%) and maintaining service availability/performance (29%).
  • The most crucial tech investment pillar is simplifying how they run the business (60%). Tech approaches seen as necessary in supporting these investment pillars include multi-cloud strategy (79%), High-Performance Computing (77%) and automated AI (76%). 69% say edge computing.
  • COVID-19 has accelerated or increased tech innovation in 49% of organisations while remaining at the same pace for 35%. 78% say non-stop IT and infrastructure stability is more important than ever.

Unlocking the potential of open source

  • 82% agree that open source enables innovation at the edge, and 78% see open source as a way to drive innovation cost-effectively. 68% are looking to migrate from proprietary to open source solutions wherever possible, lower than in other markets.
  • 79% say they feel optimistic about the future of open source BUT 77% say that the involvement of big tech players in open source may erode confidence and trust in the community.

Moving to multi-cloud 

  • 59% of organisations say they currently have a multi-cloud strategy, 36% are working on this in the next two years.
  • Key drivers for a multi-cloud strategy include cost-effectiveness (47%) and improving resilience/minimising downtime (35%). 
  • To progress, organisations say they now need to modernise/migrate applications (50%), build cloud competencies and skills in the IT team (45%) and identify and resolve organisational roadblocks (45%).

Innovating at the edge

  • 26% of IT leaders say they are excited about the possibilities that edge computing presents. 55% say they are interested in the possibilities. 
  • Compelling benefits of edge computing are enhanced security and privacy (37%), real-time insights (36%) and interoperability between modern smart devices and legacy devices (36%).
  • Edge computing has the potential to transform industries through enabling innovation (47%), reducing costs (44%) and improving customer experience (41%).
  • 65% think COVID-19 has accelerated moves to edge computing.
  • Key concerns about edge computing include control and management (43%) and security and accessibility (39%).

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Unpacking the benefits of containers

  • 33% currently run containers for production workloads, with a further 42% planning to run containers for production workloads in the next 12 months. Where containers are already being run, 79% definitely plan to increase the proportion of production workloads that are containerised over the next 12 months.
  • 33% of those running containers for production workloads say they currently use Kubernetes, lower than in other markets, although many users and planners consider Kubernetes. The preference is for a commercially curated and supported distribution of an open-source Kubernetes platform (59%). The top three things that users/planners look for in a Kubernetes platform are independence/no vendor lock-in (33%), 100% open source (33%), and multi-cluster/potential for edge deployments (32%).”

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Luke Conrad

Technology & Marketing Enthusiast

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