TRENDING
Enthusiasm could be blunted a by a lack of emerging , relevant skillsets in the market .
application security and delivery technology solutions that support them – closer to users .
On top of that , two-thirds were using at least two methods to create modern workloads ( the combination of traditional and modern app components that result from modernization ). Of the respondents claiming to use only one method , 44 %, said that they were enabling modern interfaces , either via APIs or components such as containers . A mere 11 %, mainly technology organizations , are exclusively refactoring applications .
“ Add to that the use of Edge Computing and we ’ re starting to see incredible momentum for the emergence of truly adaptive applications that can grow , shrink , defend and heal themselves based on the environment they ’ re in and how they ’ re being used .”
App modernization efforts double and AI adoption triples
Since the last SOAS report , the adoption rate of AI and Machine Learning , a marker of late-phase Digital Transformation , more than tripled to 56 %.
In other forward-looking developments , over half of respondents said they now treat infrastructure as code . The report shows that organizations using this approach are twice as likely to deploy apps more frequently , even when using automation . They are also four times more likely to have fully automated application pipelines and twice as likely to have more than half of their application portfolios deployed using fully automated pipelines .
Architectural trends and shifts
The vast majority of organizations will continue to manage both traditional and modern applications and architectures . This expectation is supported by the 87 % of survey respondents claiming that they now juggle both – an 11 % increase over 2020 . Nearly half of all organizations – 30 % more than last year – said they are managing at least five different architectures .
According to almost half of the survey respondents , the pandemic was the main factor in accelerating movement to the cloud and SaaS . More than two-thirds of respondents ( 68 %) are now hosting at least some of their application security and delivery technologies in the cloud . Simultaneously , organizations are positioning themselves to address the architectural complexity that results from adding SaaS and Edge solutions , maintaining on-premises and multi-cloud environments and modernizing applications .
Lori MacVittie , Principal Technical Evangelist ,
Office of the CTO at F5
Furthermore , 57 % respondents embraced digital expansion , which is a 37 % increase on last year . The latter shows an intensifying focus on business process automation , orchestration and digital workflows , stitching together disparate applications to create seamless digital experiences . The same objective is being achieved through the use of APIs .
There was also an eye-catching 133 % annual rise in respondents saying they are modernizing internal or customer-facing applications , with 77 % now doing so .
Application security and delivery solutions were also in the SOAS spotlight . The critical roles these enabling technologies play in customer experience and service level agreements ( SLAs ) are now recognized by nearly four out of five respondents . SaaS-based security was identified as organizations ’ top overall strategic focus over the next two to five years .
Growing ambitions at the Edge
Edge Computing is also set to attract plenty of attention in 2021 . As many as 76 % of organizations surveyed say they have implemented or are actively planning Edge deployments , with improving application performance and collecting data / enabling analytics as the primary drivers . Moreover , 39 % believe that Edge Computing
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