The thirteenth annual Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud Report provides an in-depth look at the current trends and statistics in cloud computing. The report, based on a survey of 753 IT professionals and executive leaders, sheds light on various aspects such as cloud migration, cloud computing, and the public, private, and multi-cloud market.
One of the key findings of the report is that managing cloud spending continues to be the top challenge for organizations, surpassing security concerns for the second consecutive year. A significant number of respondents, 29%, spend over $12 million annually on cloud services, with 22% investing the same amount in Software as a Service (SaaS).
Moreover, there is a growing trend towards multi-cloud adoption, with 89% of respondents using multiple cloud services, up from 87% the previous year. Large enterprises are particularly embracing multi-cloud FinOps (financial operations) and security tools, with 61% utilizing multi-cloud security and 57% employing multi-cloud FinOps.
The report also highlights that the top multi-cloud implementations include siloed applications on different clouds and disaster recovery/failover between clouds. There has been a notable increase in the adoption of these strategies, indicating organizations’ focus on optimizing application performance and data analysis across multiple cloud platforms.
In terms of cloud service providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure continue to lead the market, with 49% and 45% of respondents using their services for significant workloads, respectively. While the adoption of AWS and Azure is on the rise, other providers like Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, IBM, and Alibaba Cloud have seen slower growth in usage.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) remain the highest cloud adopters, although there has been a slight decrease in their cloud workloads compared to the previous year. Despite this, SMBs continue to leverage the public cloud for a majority of their workloads and data.
Looking ahead, the report indicates a growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, with a significant increase in the usage of PaaS offerings related to data warehousing, containers, and serverless computing. Additionally, sustainability initiatives are gaining traction among organizations, with nearly half of the respondents already tracking the carbon footprint of their cloud usage.
Overall, the report emphasizes the importance of innovation and digital transformation, even in the face of economic volatility. By prioritizing cost optimization and sustainability initiatives, organizations can position themselves for success in a rapidly evolving cloud computing landscape.
For more detailed insights on cloud computing trends and migration statistics, you can access the complete survey results. Additionally, you can assess your own cloud maturity by taking the Cloud Maturity Assessment, which provides personalized recommendations for enhancing efficiency and cost optimization in less than 10 minutes.