Sven Barten, Enterprise Networking Lead at Cisco Germany: "Silo operation is still a key obstacle to secure access to multiple cloud-based applications at distributed locations."

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"German companies were skeptical about the cloud for a long time, and the resulting lag is still visible in international comparison," says Sven Barten, Enterprise Networking Lead at Cisco Germany. "The cloud is now used as a matter of course, partly due to the pandemic-related implementation of hybrid work and virtual collaboration. However, concerns about transparency, security and smooth integration with the enterprise network are still causing companies in Germany to hesitate. As a result, the benefits of the multi-cloud are not yet being fully utilized."

The increasing importance of the cloud in Germany is reflected in the fact that 78% of IT decision-makers surveyed plan to host more than 40% of their workloads there by 2025. Currently, only 63% of companies do so. Cloud use in Germany is still well below its potential. This is also evident in the areas of IT security and agility. Multiple clouds play a subordinate role when it comes to corporate security. This point is only mentioned as the penultimate reason for using multiple clouds (31% in Germany, but 45% worldwide). In addition, the topics of flexibility and innovation are less important for German companies when using multiple clouds than for the global average (35% in Germany, 40% worldwide).

Technological priorities

According to the study, a high level of transparency of internet and cloud traffic is particularly important when the majority of user and device transactions take place outside the company boundaries. Ensuring end-to-end transparency across the entire digital service delivery chain is therefore a key concern. Every second IT team in Germany sees this as a priority for the next two years.

Just over half of respondents (53% worldwide, 48% in Germany) also prioritize the integration of the enterprise network with cloud service providers over the same period. This should improve connectivity to cloud-based applications from all locations. In addition, network teams want to move from reactive to predictive operation to improve uptime and performance levels. 43% of respondents in Germany plan to prioritize the introduction of predictive network analytics in the next two years.

Security - the challenge

According to the Cisco study, the biggest challenge is still providing secure access to applications that are distributed across multiple clouds. This was mentioned by 41% of network experts (worldwide and in Germany). Silo operation is of particular importance to the respondents. For 40 percent of them worldwide (30 percent in Germany), it represents a central hurdle that stands in the way of secure access to multiple cloud-based applications at distributed locations. One reason: siloed organizations and traditional models for providing connectivity can hardly meet the dynamic security requirements of distributed applications, people and things.

However, security can be a solution as well as a challenge. 49% of CloudOps professionals and 42% of NetOps professionals surveyed worldwide say that security is their most important reason for using multiple clouds. More and more companies are also merging software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and cloud security to provide an integrated SASE architecture. Within the next two years, 54% of respondents in Germany expect to expand their SD-WAN environments into a complete SASE architecture. This is how they want to connect their branch offices and remote clients.

"IT priorities have shifted in the past year: Agility and business performance are more important than costs and network management for the first time," continues Sven Barten. "At the same time, companies are confronted with a high degree of complexity and uncertainty. This reinforces the need for simple, secure solutions that offer end-to-end transparency, automation and a cloud-based operating model."

The study

The Global Networking Trends Report 2023 is Cisco's fourth annual study on global networking trends. This year, it focuses on networking in a multi-cloud world. It also highlights trends and priorities of companies. This shows how successful cloud strategies will affect the role of networks in the future. The report is based on a survey of 2,577 IT decision-makers from 13 countries (Germany, France, the UK, the USA, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and Singapore). In Germany, almost 200 IT experts from development, cloud and network management were surveyed, in particular early adopters of cloud technologies.