Technology leaders need channel partners to help them manage the complexity and data explosion of their multi-cloud and cloud-native environments, a new survey has found.
Security outfit Dynatrace announced the findings of an independent global survey of 1,300 CTOs, CIOs, and other technology leaders in large organisations. This shows a growing need for channel partners to help their customers tackle the complexity of modern cloud technology stacks.
Organisations are continuing to embrace multi-cloud environments and cloud-native architectures to achieve the speed, scalability, and agility needed to keep up with the rapid pace of digital innovation.
However, the report found they are struggling to contain and act on the explosion of data that these environments create. These findings highlight the growing opportunity for the channel to unlock new revenue by delivering the solutions and services organisations need to drive a mature AI, analytics, and automation strategy.
More than 88 per cent of organisations say the complexity of their technology stack has increased in the past 12 months, and 51 per cent say it will continue to increase.
The report found that the average multi-cloud environment spans 12 different platforms and services.
Technology leaders say multi-cloud complexity makes it more difficult to deliver outstanding customer experiences (87 percent) and makes applications more difficult to protect (84 percent).
More than 86 per cent of technology leaders say cloud-native technology stacks produce an explosion of data beyond humans’ ability to manage.
On average, organisations use ten monitoring and observability tools to manage applications, infrastructure, and user experience.
More than 85 per cent of technology leaders say the number of tools, platforms, dashboards, and applications they rely on adds to the complexity of managing a multi-cloud environment.
Dynatrace VP Partner Sales Worldwide Michael Allen said that for more than a decade, the channel has worked tirelessly to support customers transitioning from legacy environments to the cloud.
“These journeys have provided invaluable growth opportunities for the channel as the industry has moved from a ‘box-shifting’ mindset to one of continuous value creation. Now, the focus is turning to how the channel can help customers tame the complexity of their increasingly dynamic and distributed technology stacks,” he said.
“This research highlights that customers urgently need their channel partners to deliver solutions that enable them to optimise their cloud environments, improve user experiences, and drive faster, more secure software innovation,” Allen said.
Additional findings include:
- 81 per cent of technology leaders say manual approaches to log management and analytics cannot keep up with the rate of change in their technology stack and the volumes of data it produces.
- 81 per cent of technology leaders say the time their teams spend maintaining monitoring tools and preparing data for analysis steals time from innovation.
- 72 per cent of organisations have adopted AIOps to reduce the complexity of managing their multi-cloud environment.
- 97 per cent of technology leaders say probabilistic machine learning approaches have limited the value AIOps delivers due to the manual effort needed to gain reliable insights.
“Organisations are drowning in the deluge of data teeming from their clouds,” said Allen.
“The channel has an important role in helping customers tame the complexity of their modern technology stacks by cost-effectively capturing, analysing, and using this data to drive intelligent automation. However, our research shows that customers see limited value from AIOps solutions, as they require too much manual effort to turn data into answers.”
He said the channel must provide solutions combining causal, predictive, and generative AI to drive advanced analytics and cloud automation.
“By bringing these solutions into their portfolio, the channel can deliver significant value and unlock further revenue opportunities by giving customers greater confidence to continue their journey to more complex, agile, and distributed technology stacks,” he said.
