Dive Brief:
- Enterprises are leaning on hybrid cloud strategies to accommodate growing AI workloads, a Wednesday report from advisory firm Information Services Group found.
- More than 80% of enterprises are revisiting their cloud plans to better support AI, the report found, citing wishes to strengthen their operational resilience and improve consistency, cut costs and improve performance. Hybrid approaches that are gaining popularity often include a combination of public cloud, private cloud, colocation, edge and sovereign environments, or all of the above, the report found.
- Organizations looking for flexibility and cost-consciousness are redesigning their operating models to meet the demands of AI, Anay Nawathe, ISG cloud delivery lead for the Americas, said in a statement. “Hybrid cloud has become less about where workloads run and more about how enterprises maintain control across increasingly diverse environments,” he said.
Dive Insight:
As enterprise demand for AI compute rises, and executives worry about increasing costs or vendor lock-in, more companies are taking a hybrid cloud approach.
Preparing to expand AI use is one of the central reasons to change cloud strategies, ISG’s report found. Enterprises are investing in GPU-enabled architectures, distributed data platforms and hybrid AI operating models while adopting AI platforms.
Organizations are seeking unified platforms that combine observability, automation and financial management into one operating framework, the report found. Performance and cost management were also high priorities for enterprises seeking hybrid cloud environments.
Vendors in the sprawling cloud market have quickly moved to address the growing needs for AI-ready compute. Neocloud providers, which offer AI-optimized infrastructure, will earn 20% of the $267 billion AI cloud market by 2030, a recent Gartner study found. Apple opened up access to private cloud compute in June, while Blackstone and Google launched a compute-as-a-service offering in May.
Increasing AI workloads and GPU-intensive infrastructure is driving up demand for cost transparency and optimization across private cloud, Kubernetes, edge and sovereign cloud environments, the report found.
Sovereignty is a major factor behind diversifying cloud offerings, the report said, as enterprises want more control over infrastructure, data residency and AI governance for their long-term AI plans.
“The most effective hybrid platforms no longer treat operations, cyber recovery and cost management as separate disciplines,” said Shashank Rajmane, ISG principal analyst and lead author of the report, in press release about the report. “Enterprises increasingly expect providers to unify these capabilities, improving business continuity and long-term performance.”
