Many proponents of the software-defined data center (SDDC) believe this is the year that it will gain significant traction on its path to becoming a permanent fixture among larger enterprises. One of the main reasons for this optimism is the belief that security is becoming less of a barrier to adoption.

That might be the case, but a new survey from cloud security specialist HyTrust Inc. shows that security remains the biggest reason why enterprises have resisted jumping aboard the software-defined bus so far. More than 45 percent of respondents said that security was their biggest concern when deploying software-defined infrastructure, especially in the case of mission-critical applications.

Nevertheless, California-based HyTrust said its survey showed that 70 percent of respondents believe that security breaches are becoming less of an obstacle to cloud deployment, underscoring the momentum towards increasing adoption that begun earlier this year.

HyTrust surveyed around 500 business and technology executives for its survey, finding that two thirds of them believe software-defined infrastructure will see greater adoption this year. Moreover, a roughly equal number said they also expect to see “faster deployment” this year. Just under fifty percent said the adoption of network virtualization would increase in 2016, while 45 percent said they expected to see more adoption of public cloud infrastructure.

That last prediction tallies with a steady shift among enterprises towards the hybrid cloud, which offers the benefits of elastic computing and storage while allowing companies to keep mission-critical workloads safely in-house.

HyTrust’s survey showed that 38 percent of executives believe this year will see greater adoption of workloads which “traverse” hybrid clouds, while a similar number stated their belief adoption of hyper-converged infrastructure will also see gains.

“On a particularly optimistic note, 41 percent now expect better alignment of security strategies specifically to address” software-defined datacenters, HyTrust said in a statement.

One of the keys to hybrid cloud deployment, cited by 90 percent of executives, is the necessity of “enforcing consistent policies aligned to meet compliance, security and business needs.”

There was a similar consensus among executives that “effective automation” is essential to reduce manual processes while maintaining good security. That push towards automation can be seen in the trend towards freeing up DevOps teams on developing and deploying apps faster, HyTrust found.

IT budgets are also becoming less of a stumbling block towards the virtualization of infrastructure. HyTrust said just 20 percent of executives identified cost as a major barrier to adoption. Finally, in another sign that software-defined technology is on the cusp of hitting prime time is that only 15 percent of execs said performance is a barrier to adoption.

Image credit: luiskarlos74 via pixabay