Enterprise Cloud Index : Healthcare Industry Relies On The Hybrid Cloud

For the new study “Enterprise Cloud Index ” by Nutanix, companies in the healthcare sector were asked whether they use private, public or hybrid cloud. Seventy percent of surveyed people confirmed that the Covid 19 pandemic has given the IT infrastructure a strategically important role and accelerated their digital transformation projects.

With the pandemic outbreak, the healthcare industry was looking for ways and means to effectively master the essential technical requirements triggered by the Covid 19 crisis – from setting up home workplaces to supporting telemedicine procedures to coping with the growing number of patients. Against this background, the digital transformation in the healthcare industry has top priority. The healthcare sector is showing the most significant interest in an IT model based on a hybrid cloud. Ninety-five percent of those surveyed see this as the model of their choice.

Hybrid Cloud: Replacement Of Traditional IT Architecture

More than half of respondents in the healthcare industry have increased their use of the public cloud and the hybrid cloud , while 46 percent have increased their investments in private cloud environments. The industry aimed to give the newly arrived teleworkers access to IT resources in the shortest possible time. Before the crisis, 77 percent of the companies surveyed had employees who worked from home. At the time of the survey, it was 93 percent.

The future of the healthcare industry depends on the replacement of traditional architectures: 27 percent of those surveyed only use standard, non-cloud-enabled data centers. That is more than in any other industry with an average of 18 percent. But the gap will become smaller: The share of traditional data centers in the industry will decrease by 21 percentage points by 2025, while the share of hybrid cloud implementations will increase by 32 percentage points.

Hyper-Converged Infrastructures As The Basis For Hybrid Cloud

To support the modernization of IT and pave the way towards the hybrid cloud, the healthcare industry is turning to hyper-converged infrastructures: Hyper-converged infrastructures (HCI) are often viewed as the basis for hybrid cloud infrastructure, the HCI of the next decade. Because hyper-converged infrastructures massively reduce the time required to set up a software-controlled infrastructure necessary to support a private cloud. At the same time, they offer the scalability of cloud technology. Around 64 percent of respondents in the healthcare industry said they have already introduced hyper-converged infrastructures or are in the process of doing so. Compared to the global average of 50 percent, this is a significantly higher proportion.

Security And Compliance As The Most Significant Challenges

Security, data protection, and compliance, in general, represent a significant challenge for the digital transformation of the healthcare industry: 58 percent of respondents from the healthcare industry see the issue of security as a significant challenge compared to 51 percent on the global average. In addition, 45 percent of respondents from the healthcare industry named the issues of cost control and business continuity as significant challenges more often than their colleagues from other industries.

In the healthcare industry, cost advantages are increasingly becoming a decisive factor influencing the provision of IT infrastructures: the healthcare industry sees the respective strengths of technology solutions concerning security, data protection, and compliance as essential factors influencing the decision-making process for specific infrastructure. On the other hand, in the health sector, cost advantages were cited as a decisive criterion more often than the issue of safety. A similar finding was otherwise only found in the services for consumers and the energy industry.

Hybrid Cloud As A Critical Factor For Digital Transformation

“The healthcare industry is in a critical phase. It needs to accelerate its digital transformation to meet the needs of patients and staff better. The powerful trigger for this acceleration was the pandemic. IT decision-makers agree that the hybrid cloud is a critical factor for digital transformation, “.

“Now, it is important that companies and organizations in the healthcare sector identify the IT solutions that will help them on this path. They need to invest in private cloud environments based on hyper-converged infrastructures and find ways and means to connect their private and public cloud environments. With all this, the issues of safety and costs must never lose priority,”.

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