Flexera admits 2024 will be a “complicated” year for cloud adoption as it releases its latest State of the Cloud report While cost optimization remains key, resiliency is slowly becoming an important differentiator .
Often considered an industry benchmark study, the 13th report polls more than 750 decision-makers on usage and trends by IT and cloud management providers.
Some trends have actually reached saturation point; 89% of respondents have a multi-cloud setup, up two percentage points from the previous year, with nearly three-quarters (73%) using hybrid cloud. AWS is used by 78% of respondents, with half (49%) running high-volume workloads. For Azure, the ratios are 80% and 45% respectively.
When it comes to priorities between cost optimization and sustainability, 59% of decision makers say cost optimization is the top consideration. Only 8% said sustainability and reducing carbon footprint; however, 29% said both were equally important. Nearly half of respondents (48%) said they have sustainability plans in place, including tracking the carbon footprint of their cloud usage.
A quarter of respondents said they are using generative AI services from public cloud providers. 22% rarely use them and 38% say they are trying. Flexera noted that “nearly all” platform-as-a-service (PaaS) products have seen increased usage.
The strong focus on cost optimization means organizations are turning to FinOps tools to assist. 57% of respondents overall use multi-cloud FinOps tools. More than half (51%) of respondents said they have a FinOps team that partially manages, advises or executes cloud cost optimization strategies. Another 20% said they planned to implement the measure within the next 12 months.
There is an interesting data point regarding where the responsibility for cloud spending lies (below). Managing cloud usage and costs (whether IaaS or PaaS) is the responsibility of specific cloud teams (52%) and infrastructure/operations teams (53%), by roughly equal proportions. But when it comes to specifically optimizing cloud spend, the differences are significant — 42% of cloud teams, 56% of infrastructure/operations teams.
56% of respondents said they have automated usage monitoring policies, including 48% who have automated policies for shutting down workloads after hours. Despite this, only 35% of surveyed organizations currently use automated strategies to achieve the required tags. Another 39% of respondents do this manually.
If the balance between optimizing costs and sustainability now favors the former, then European sustainability directives – such as CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standard) – may Play a driving role. In contrast to global figures, 56% of European respondents said they have a clear sustainability plan in place.
“Organizations are responding to economic uncertainty by investing in generative artificial intelligence, security and resiliency while prioritizing cost management,” said Brian Adler, senior director of cloud market strategy at Flexera. He added that cloud adoption rates Continued growth.
“The shift to hybrid and multi-cloud environments highlights the importance of comprehensive cost management, with nearly half of all workloads and data now residing in public clouds,” Adler added. “As companies move to centralized strategic cloud management, FinOps practices and cloud centers of excellence are continuing to evolve.”
You can read the full report here (email required).
Photography: maitree rimthong
Chart from Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud Report and licensed under CC BY 4.0.
