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The thirteenth annual Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud Report (previously known as the RightScale State of the CloudReport) highlights the latest cloud computing trends and statistics, including strategies, challenges and initiatives from a broad cross-section of industries and organizations. The cloud computing report explores the thinking of 753 IT professionals and executive leaders from a survey conducted in late Q4 2023 and highlights the year-over-year (YoY) changes to help identify trends. The respondentsglobal cloud decision makers and usersrevealed their experiences with cloud migration, cloud computing and their thoughts about the public, private and multi-cloud market.

Select highlights of the report on cloud computing are included below.

Terminology used:

This marks the second year in a row that managing cloud spending is the top challenge facing organizations. As in previous years, there needs to be more resources/expertise. More than a quarter of respondents spend over $12 million a year on cloud (29%), and nearly a quarter (22%) spend that much on SaaS.

Respondents saw a slight increase in multi-cloud usage, up from 87% last year to 89% this year.

Sixty-one percent of large enterprises use multi-cloud security, and 57% use multi-cloud FinOps (cost optimization) tools.

The top two multi-cloud implementations are: apps siloed on different clouds, DR/failover between clouds. Apps siloed on different clouds increased the most (up to 57% from 44% YoY). Data integration between clouds increased to 45% from 37% YoY as organizations looked for the best fit for applications and data analysis.

Adoption grew for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Forty-nine percent of respondents reported using AWS for significant workloads, while 45% reported using Azure and 21% reported using Google Cloud Platform. In contrast, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, IBM and Alibaba Cloud usage is substantially lower and relatively unchanged compared to the previous year.

SMBs are the highest cloud adopters, but fell off slightly from the previous year, with 61% (a drop from 67% last year) of workloads and 60% of data in the public cloud for both years.

Nearly all platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings saw a gain in usage, with the most prominent being in the data warehouse (up to 65% from 56% YoY). Container-as-a-service (52%) and serverless (function-as-a-service) (48%) are both up nine percentage points this year. Machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) had a modest gain at 41%, up from 36% last year. However, ML/AI is the PaaS offering getting the most attention from companies experimenting (32%) or planning to use it (17%).

Forty-eight percent of respondents say they already have defined sustainability initiatives that include tracking the carbon footprint of cloud usage. When asked how sustainability compares to cost optimization, 59% prioritized cost optimization, though an additional 29% say that both cloud cost optimization and sustainability are equally prioritized.

The world has experienced extraordinary disruption in the past few years, and while organizations of all sizes are prioritizing every dollar of spend, the cloud and technology will weather economic storms. Enterprises that remain focused on digital transformation, seizing new opportunities and evolving strategic initiatives through a cost-conscious lens will be better positioned for success than their competitors.

Get the latest insights in cloud computing trends and cloud migration statistics by viewing the complete survey results here.

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Cloud computing trends - Enterprise License Optimization Blog