The State of Application Delivery in 2016

Cloud technology environments are still high on the agenda in 2016, with 4 in 5 organisations planning on operating in a hybrid cloud environment, according to F5’s 2016 State of Application Delivery report.

Over 3000 survey respondents provided insight into their environments, tools and applications, detailing what technologies they believe will have a strategic impact, what’s holding them back and what technology they use day-to-day to provision and deliver apps and app services in their organisations.

F5 conducted their survey on a global scale, focussing on the app services organisations want, need and rely on to deliver apps. They also delved into the trends and technology driving the need for app services, like mobility, cloud, DevOps, IoT and SDN.

They found that over 80% of organisations are moving towards hybrid cloud environments, attracted by the flexibility and potential cost savings this move could bring.

The report also shows that 60% of organisations are using 10 or more app services to deliver apps, with nearly half of these being focussed on security. Indeed, availability and security top the list of “must-haves” and organisations that are considering app services delivered from a managed cloud are often honing in on security-related ones like DDoS and ID federation.

Many respondents to the survey demonstrated a lukewarm attitude to the concept of DevOps but a number of organisations are using 1-3 different automation frameworks to provision and deploy apps across cloud and on-premises locations. Take up for SDN is sluggish, with only 3% stating that they have implementations in production. A further 36% are exploring the concept, however, and are currently in the evaluation stage.