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2016 State of the Cloud

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

"Hybrid adoption is growing with companies using 6 different clouds on average," said Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale, citing the RightScale 2016 State of the Cloud Survey. "More workloads are moving to public and private clouds; security concerns have abated; cloud cost management challenges are increasing; and Docker is showing phenomenal growth. We also saw changes in the public cloud provider landscape with #2 Azure gaining ground on leader AWS."

Highlights of the report include:

Hybrid Cloud Adoption Grew Significantly

Private cloud adoption increased from 63 percent to 77 percent, driving hybrid cloud adoption up from 58 percent to 71 percent year-over-year.

Cloud Users Leverage 6 Clouds on Average

Cloud users are running applications in an average of 1.5 public clouds and 1.7 private clouds. They are experimenting with an additional 1.5 public clouds and 1.3 private clouds.

More Enterprise Workloads Shift to Cloud, Especially Private Cloud

17 percent of enterprises now have more than 1,000 VMs in public cloud, up from 13 percent in 2014. Private cloud showed even stronger growth with 31 percent of enterprises running more than 1,000 VMs, up from 22 percent in 2014.

Security Is No Longer the Top Cloud Challenge

Lack of resources/expertise is now the #1 cloud challenge (cited by 32 percent), supplanting security (cited by 29 percent).

Cloud Cost Challenges Increase, but Optimization Efforts Lag

26 percent of respondents identify cloud cost management as a significant challenge, a steady increase each year from 18 percent in 2013. Cloud cost management provides a significant opportunity for savings, since few companies are taking critical actions to optimize cloud costs, such as shutting down unused workloads or selecting lower-cost cloud or regions.

DevOps Grows and Docker Spreads Like Wildfire, Especially in the Enterprise

Overall DevOps adoption rises from 66 to 74 percent, with enterprises reaching 81 percent. Overall Docker adoption more than doubles to 27 percent vs. 13 percent in 2015; and another 35 percent have plans to use Docker.

AWS Continues to Lead in Public Cloud Adoption, but Azure (Iaas and PaaS) Gain Ground

Overall, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is used by 57 percent of respondents, flat from last year. Enterprise adoption of AWS grew from 50 percent to 56 percent while adoption by smaller businesses fell slightly from 61 percent to 58 percent. Azure IaaS grows strongly from 12 percent to 17 percent adoption, while Azure PaaS grows from 9 percent to 13 percent.

Private Cloud Adoption Grows Across All Providers

VMware vSphere continues to lead with strong year-over-year growth. 44 percent of all respondents report they use it as a private cloud. OpenStack and VMware vCloud Suite both show strong growth and remain tied at 19 percent adoption overall.

Survey Methodology: RightScale conducted its annual State of the Cloud Survey in January 2016. The survey questioned technical professionals across a broad cross-section of organizations about their adoption of cloud computing. The 1,060 respondents range from technical executives to managers and practitioners and represent organizations of varying sizes across many industries. The margin of error is 3.07 percent.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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2016 State of the Cloud

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

"Hybrid adoption is growing with companies using 6 different clouds on average," said Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale, citing the RightScale 2016 State of the Cloud Survey. "More workloads are moving to public and private clouds; security concerns have abated; cloud cost management challenges are increasing; and Docker is showing phenomenal growth. We also saw changes in the public cloud provider landscape with #2 Azure gaining ground on leader AWS."

Highlights of the report include:

Hybrid Cloud Adoption Grew Significantly

Private cloud adoption increased from 63 percent to 77 percent, driving hybrid cloud adoption up from 58 percent to 71 percent year-over-year.

Cloud Users Leverage 6 Clouds on Average

Cloud users are running applications in an average of 1.5 public clouds and 1.7 private clouds. They are experimenting with an additional 1.5 public clouds and 1.3 private clouds.

More Enterprise Workloads Shift to Cloud, Especially Private Cloud

17 percent of enterprises now have more than 1,000 VMs in public cloud, up from 13 percent in 2014. Private cloud showed even stronger growth with 31 percent of enterprises running more than 1,000 VMs, up from 22 percent in 2014.

Security Is No Longer the Top Cloud Challenge

Lack of resources/expertise is now the #1 cloud challenge (cited by 32 percent), supplanting security (cited by 29 percent).

Cloud Cost Challenges Increase, but Optimization Efforts Lag

26 percent of respondents identify cloud cost management as a significant challenge, a steady increase each year from 18 percent in 2013. Cloud cost management provides a significant opportunity for savings, since few companies are taking critical actions to optimize cloud costs, such as shutting down unused workloads or selecting lower-cost cloud or regions.

DevOps Grows and Docker Spreads Like Wildfire, Especially in the Enterprise

Overall DevOps adoption rises from 66 to 74 percent, with enterprises reaching 81 percent. Overall Docker adoption more than doubles to 27 percent vs. 13 percent in 2015; and another 35 percent have plans to use Docker.

AWS Continues to Lead in Public Cloud Adoption, but Azure (Iaas and PaaS) Gain Ground

Overall, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is used by 57 percent of respondents, flat from last year. Enterprise adoption of AWS grew from 50 percent to 56 percent while adoption by smaller businesses fell slightly from 61 percent to 58 percent. Azure IaaS grows strongly from 12 percent to 17 percent adoption, while Azure PaaS grows from 9 percent to 13 percent.

Private Cloud Adoption Grows Across All Providers

VMware vSphere continues to lead with strong year-over-year growth. 44 percent of all respondents report they use it as a private cloud. OpenStack and VMware vCloud Suite both show strong growth and remain tied at 19 percent adoption overall.

Survey Methodology: RightScale conducted its annual State of the Cloud Survey in January 2016. The survey questioned technical professionals across a broad cross-section of organizations about their adoption of cloud computing. The 1,060 respondents range from technical executives to managers and practitioners and represent organizations of varying sizes across many industries. The margin of error is 3.07 percent.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
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From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...