As businesses turn to the cloud for their IT needs, hybrid cloud and increasingly multicloud environments have become the “new norm,” according to a new study from Cisco.

The 2022 Global Hybrid Cloud Trends Report is designed to guide IT professionals who are considering cloud strategy and provide an update on the current progress of organizations that have converted to hybrid environments. Conducted by 451 Research, the study included 2,500 global IT decision-makers and professionals across 13 countries. 

Hybrid environments enable interoperability between clouds that include on-premises private, hosted private, or public/infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds. According to the survey results, more IT organizations are seeking a hybrid cloud approach to manage critical workloads and improve business performance and progress efficiency.

In fact, 42% of the respondents that have adopted hybrid cloud believe the approach enables them to achieve a more “agile and scalable development environment.” Other motives include enabling business agility and increased scale. A robust 73% of respondents said backup or disaster recovery were the most popular processes for hybrid cloud in IT, while 70% used hybrid cloud for application development.

Security is a top reason that organizations are converting to a hybrid cloud or multicloud approach, but 37% of survey respondents said it's also a key challenge. However, if executed properly, converting to a hybrid or multicloud environment can accelerate efficiency in IT organizations and improve security measures, the report noted.

The report also highlighted the importance of managing security risk by being cautious when placing data and workloads when it comes to cloud operations. Advancing in cloud operations requires security teams to develop a common framework between spaces to avoid operational mistakes.

The use of multicloud spaces comes with operational complexities, which one-third of respondents reported experiencing. To level the complexities of hybrid cloud spaces, 94% of respondents use cloud-based IT operations platforms, while 60% said software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based operation platforms are preferred. 

Rapidly changing technology requires organizations to follow suit in multicloud environments or risk losing their footing in the evolving industry. According to the report, converting to hybrid cloud environments can prove successful for IT organizations’ strategies in capitalizing on business agility, scale, and technology advancements.