Red Hat Releases Three Different Studies on Mobile Development, Digital Leadership and OpenStack Adoption

Red Hat has recently published three different studies focusing on: mobile development trends, OpenStack enterprise adoption, and digital leadership.

A new mobile trends survey by Red Hat shows that - while mobile plays a role for 73 percent of organizations - nearly half of the respondents identify security (45 percent) and back-end integration(43 percent) as the top challenges for mobile app development. 

Other challenges identified by respondents include UI/UX design (35 percent), team collaboration (34 percent), and cost (24 percent).

Red Hat polled its global customer base to identify the priorities and challenges around enterprise mobility, as well as emerging attitudes toward the Internet of Things. 

Key findings from the survey include:

- More than half of organizations that are developing mobile apps are still dependent on do-it-yourself back-end integration solutions. When integrating mobile apps into back-end systems, 55 percent of respondents that develop apps say they use external sources (libraries, marketplace and vendor services) to develop custom back-end integrations, custom-developed back-end integrations coded from scratch, or a mix of both. 

- Although mobile application platforms and Mobile Backend-as-a-Service (MBaaS) exist as effective solutions to integrate apps with enterprise back-end systems, less than one-third (30 percent) are using them, with one in five (20 percent) using application programming interface (API) management. In addition, 20 percent of respondents either use existing middleware technology or an API from their back-end software vendor to connect their mobile apps.

- The majority of organizations anticipate the Internet of Things (IoT) will impact their business. Most businesses are acknowledging the growing relationship between mobile and IoT by actively planning for the next wave of integration that will be required by connected devices. While 21 percent of organizations have already incorporated IoT projects into their business, more than one in four (28 percent) plan to do so in the next year, and 70 percent plan to do so over the next five years.

- Organizations’ priorities for IT resources are geared toward core systems. Despite the appetite for mobile and IoT, when allocating IT resources for the year ahead, 60 percent of respondents are prioritizing maintenance of core systems and applications. This points to shadow IT as an increasing trend, where the business bypasses IT to create and use their own apps.

The study was conducted on behalf of Red Hat by TechValidate which hosted an online survey in March and April 2015, to understand priorities and challenges around enterprise mobility. The survey polled 112 global Red Hat customers, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses.

The OpenStack enterprise adoption survey reached over 310 IT decision makers and professionals from around the world. Top findings from the survey include the majority of respondents (75 percent) are planning to use OpenStack for cloud initiatives. The survey found respondents in varying stages of deployment, ranging from learning and evaluation (40 percent) and proof of concept / pilots (40 percent) to preparing for deployment (18 percent) and in production (16 percent).

 

Survey respondents reported intent to run OpenStack workloads in other environments, including traditional enterprise virtualization (35 percent); physical servers (30 percent); other private / Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds (22 percent); and public clouds (18 percent).

 

Other findings from the survey include:

- OpenStack deployments span workload types. Fifty-nine (59) percent of respondents are using, or planning to use, OpenStack for new workloads optimized for cloud environments, while 52 percent of respondents are using or planning to use OpenStack for existing virtualized workloads.

- Rapid growth and broad deployment plans lead to concerns about OpenStack skills development. Forty-five (45) percent of respondents cite lack of internal IT skills as the biggest barrier to OpenStack adoption. Other top barriers include: OpenStack’s maturity (43 percent); lack of alignment with current application architectures (22 percent); and poor alignment among internal organizations (21 percent).

- Enterprise users are looking to address these concerns with offerings and support from commercial OpenStack providers. According to survey respondents, production-level technical support (82 percent) is the most important aspect of commercial OpenStack offerings, followed by simplified installation process (78 percent); the ability to move workloads between providers and platforms (75 percent); and support for complementary open source cloud management, operating system, and development tools (72 percent). 

- Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and containers are on the rise. Fifty-four (54) percent plan to use OpenStack with a PaaS, while 42 percent indicate that they plan to use containers within their OpenStack environments.

- KVM is the hypervisor of choice for OpenStack, with 75 percent of respondents indicating that they are using, or planning to use it, in OpenStack deployments. Sixty-four (64) percent of survey respondents selected VMware vSphere ESXi, while 18 percent selected Microsoft Hyper-V, and 13 percent chose Xen.

- Enterprise users are looking to OpenStack to reduce time to deployment, lower costs, and provide a more responsive IT infrastructure. According to survey respondents, the top three performance indicators for OpenStack projects include: reduced time of deployment of services (77 percent); reduced IT operational costs (52 percent); and a more responsive infrastructure to demand changes (44 percent).

 

The study was conducted by TechValidate on behalf of Red Hat from April 28 - May 5, 2015, to understand enterprise adoption trends associated with OpenStack. The survey polled more than 310 enterprise IT decision makers and professionals from global organizations across industries and of all sizes, spanning small businesses to Fortune 500 organizations.

According to the results of a Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey of 436 global business professionals commissioned by Red Hat, the payoff for educating business leaders on digital trends can be compelling as companies that excel in digital leadership were found to be significantly more likely to have experienced revenue growth of 10 percent or more over the last two years.

The report, "Driving Digital Transformation: New Skills for Leaders; New Role for the CIO,” explored whether business leaders have the digital acumen to transform their organizations for today's digital economy. The report revealed a gap between the knowledge and skills needed to drive digital transformation and the reality of most organizations. Less than a quarter (23 percent) of all survey participants are confident their organizations have the knowledge and skills to succeed in the digital aspects of their business.

The eport identifies what it calls Digital Leaders - companies that employees rated highly in both digital leadership and management. The report shows that these companies have a clear vision and strategy for digital transformation coming from the top, as well as the people, processes and technology needed to execute against that vision, which led to significantly more likely potential to see tangible business results, such as revenue growth. While only a fifth of respondents (19 percent) fell into the Digital Leaders category, these employees were considerably more confident (67 percent) in their company's ability to succeed in the digital age compared to the average (23 percent).

The survey results showed an interest for digital knowledge among business leaders - especially when it comes to data - with close to three-quarters (73 percent) rating analytics extremely important to their area of the business. Only a fifth (20 percent) rate their own analytics knowledge and skills highly. Nearly half (45 percent) of survey respondents cite the lack of an appropriate forum the biggest barrier keeping them from learning about new technology from IT leaders. More than a third (34 percent) say their IT leaders are too busy.

A significant percentage (46 percent) of survey respondents are looking to their CIO to learn about digital trends. CIOs within companies that the report calls Digital Leaders were more likely to be characterized by their colleagues as digital coaches or masters (45 percent). Further, 60 percent of respondents within Digital Leader companies - triple the percentage of respondents who rated their companies low in both digital leadership and management - believe their CIOs seek to educate and empower line of business leaders, and 67 percent have IT leaders who understand what is relevant to each business area. 

The majority (70 percent) of respondents within Digital Leader companies also have IT departments that provide useful knowledge to employees about technology, compared to only a quarter (25 percent) in companies lagging behind in digital leadership.

The Harvard Business Review Analytic Services conducted the online survey on behalf of Red Hat to examine the link between digital acumen, business transformation, and the role of the CIO. The survey polled 436 individuals in executive management, senior management or board-level positions in companies with 500 or more employees. Forty-seven percent (47 percent) of respondents were from organizations of 10,000 or more employees, and a third (33 percent) of companies had 2013 revenues of $5 billion or more. Respondents represented major sectors, including technology, financial, and manufacturing. Respondents were from North America (35 percent), Europe (26 percent), and Asia (24 percent). Fifteen percent (15 percent) were from the rest of the world.