Enterprises lose 11.5 hours a week to cloud issues

DE-CIX has published research showing that enterprise IT teams spend an average of 11.5 hours a week resolving cloud connectivity issues. The findings are based on a survey of more than 400 IT and infrastructure decision-makers in the US and UK.

The study highlights a gap between confidence in network readiness and the time spent dealing with operational problems. While 96% of respondents said their organisations' network infrastructure would support cloud and AI initiatives over the next two years, almost half said they spend more than 10 hours a week troubleshooting cloud connectivity issues.

That disconnect matters as companies increase spending on AI and cloud infrastructure and place more applications and data across multiple environments. The survey suggests networks remain a practical constraint for many businesses, even as they invest in data centres, compute and AI tools.

"AI has understandably brought renewed attention to GPUs, data centers, and compute capacity, but none of those investments deliver their full value without the network that connects them," said Ivo Ivanov, Chief Executive Officer of DE-CIX.

"Every AI application depends on data moving quickly, securely, and predictably between users, clouds, and AI infrastructure. Our research suggests that far too many enterprises are still spending valuable time trying to maintain that kind of connectivity, with more than a third spending between 11 and 20 hours per week, and just under one in ten spending between 21 and 40 hours per week. This confirms what we already knew: network architecture can make or break AI adoption."

Cloud complexity

The data indicates that multi-cloud set-ups are adding to the burden. As companies seek more control over where data is stored, processed and transferred, they are also dealing with data sovereignty rules, security concerns and the need for resilience across different cloud providers.

Among the main issues cited, 28% of respondents pointed to latency or slow performance between cloud environments, 27% cited security vulnerabilities or DDoS attacks, and 26% named downtime or reliability issues. Another 23% identified data sovereignty and geopolitics as their most significant cloud connectivity challenge over the next year.

Respondents also highlighted the cost of connectivity, staff expertise and limited visibility over data flows. Taken together, those responses suggest the problem is not confined to raw bandwidth, but extends to how networks are managed across increasingly fragmented cloud estates.

Private links

The research found that businesses are increasingly turning to private interconnection, which links enterprises directly to cloud providers over dedicated infrastructure rather than routing traffic over the public internet. Some 61% of companies already use private cloud connectivity and a further 31% are considering it.

Adoption, however, varies sharply by company size. Among organisations with 1,000 or more employees, 71% said they use private connectivity to clouds. For medium-sized businesses with 100 to 249 employees, the figure was 31%.

The survey also found a difference in the time spent fixing connectivity problems. Nearly one in ten smaller companies in the sample said they spend 21 to 40 hours a week dealing with such issues, compared with about one in 40 of the largest companies surveyed.

Those figures suggest larger businesses may be better placed to invest in direct interconnection and network design, while smaller firms face a heavier operational burden. For companies trying to deploy AI tools and cloud-based workloads, that can mean IT teams are diverted from development and security work into routine fault-finding.

Operational strain

Ivanov said the issue is not only application performance, but also how technical teams use their time.

"For enterprises, the opportunity is not only to improve application performance, but to reduce the operational burden created by complex cloud connectivity," he said.

"If the average IT team is spending 11.5 hours each week resolving connectivity issues, then every hour removed from troubleshooting can be redirected toward higher-value work such as AI enablement, cloud modernization, security hardening, and user experience improvement. Smaller companies are being disproportionately burdened with connectivity challenges. By moving critical traffic away from best-effort internet paths and onto private, direct network interconnection, DE-CIX helps organizations create more predictable routes between users, applications, clouds, and data environments."

DE-CIX operates internet exchanges and cloud interconnection services in multiple markets. Its research covered decision-makers in organisations with at least 100 employees across the UK and US, focusing on people in IT, cloud and infrastructure roles.

The findings add to a broader debate over whether enterprise AI adoption is being held back less by access to models and chips than by the practical challenge of moving data reliably between users, applications and cloud environments.