According to Red Hat, cloud management will be the biggest investment priority for IT managers in 2024.

More than one in four EMEA companies (28% of all respondents) are hindered in their digital transformation by historical technical debt. This is the conclusion reached by Red Hat’s Global Customer Tech Trends Report. The lack of suitable skills remains an obstacle to digital transformation in companies. Almost a quarter of those surveyed (24%) say they cannot find the right people.

The survey also examined cloud usage among IT managers in EMEA. Of the company’s own apps (i.e. not SaaS), 47 percent are on-premise, 40 percent are in a hybrid cloud environment and only 12 percent are in the public cloud. Respondents said they chose an on-premise solution for privacy and security reasons, while public cloud was more commonly preferred in terms of cost and technology preference. Another interesting finding: Around 40 percent of all respondents have their workloads in containers. A significant increase in container use is expected worldwide by 2024.

Efficiency and safety

When budgets are exhausted, IT managers’ investment priorities are managing the cloud (62%), consolidating the data center (35%), and optimizing cloud costs (32%). They hope to make the organization safer and more efficient. Almost half (43%) of IT managers in EMEA say they are investing in better security and data protection. Another four in ten (42%) hope for more effective business processes.

Finally, the survey asked EMEA IT executives about their security investment preferences. Network security (36%) appears to be the top financial priority, followed by threat intelligence, detection and response (35%) and vulnerability management (30%).