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Top Cloud Initiative: Optimizing Existing Use of Cloud

Optimizing existing use of cloud is the top initiative — for the seventh year in a row, reported by 62% of respondents in the Flexera 2023 State of the Cloud Report.

"This is a watershed year for cloud usage, as the report findings demonstrate," said Brian Adler, Senior Director, Cloud Market Strategy at Flexera. "We saw FinOps continue to gain traction, cost management challenges pass security as the top cloud challenge for the first time, and artificial intelligence (AI) lead all plans and experimentation of public cloud services. As economic uncertainties wane in the months or years to come, companies will continue to lean into the cloud to transform their businesses, with the goal of finding competitive advantages."

Additional highlights of the report:

Managing cloud spend overtakes security as top cloud challenge

This year marks the first time in more than a decade that managing cloud spend has overtaken security as the top challenge facing organizations. As in previous years, a lack of resources/expertise also continues to be a significant challenge.

Organizations embracing multi-cloud

Respondents indicated a slight drift toward single public cloud usage, with multi-cloud decreasing from 89% last year to 87% this year. Single public cloud usage has increased to 11%, up from 9% last year.

Use of multi-cloud tools by large enterprises is higher for FinOps than for security

Across the board for all organizations, multi-cloud security tools continue to lead, followed closely by tools for multi-cloud cost optimization (FinOps). However, large enterprises reverse the order, with 68% using multi-cloud FinOps tools and 63% using multi-cloud security tools.

Siloed apps and disaster recovery (DR)/failover are the top multi-cloud implementations

Apps siloed on different clouds and DR/failover between clouds have remained the top two multi-cloud implementations. Intelligent workload placement is increasing the fastest (up 20% year over year).

AWS and Azure still lead overall

Last year was the first year Azure surpassed AWS in adoption rates, but as shown in the 2023 report respondents indicated AWS is back on top, with 47% using the provider in significant workloads and 41% using Azure. Oracle, IBM and Alibaba cloud services remained relatively unchanged.

AWS leads SMB public cloud adoption

SMBs (businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees) continue to favor AWS over other cloud providers, with 71% using AWS and 51% using Azure. Usage of Google Cloud Platform among SMBs has significantly decreased, from 43% to 28% year over year.

Big plans for AI

Similar to last year, data warehouse is the most commonly used PaaS offering, followed by DBaaS (relational). Machine learning/artificial intelligence is being experimented with more than any other service; not surprisingly, it’s also the leading PaaS offering that is being planned for use.

Economic uncertainty is growing cloud usage

45% of respondents said economic uncertainty would have very little impact on cloud usage and spend; 9% said they would lower cloud spending somewhat, and 1% said they would lower cloud spending significantly.

Methodology: The survey tapped 750 IT professionals and executive leaders worldwide representing a broad cross-section of industries and context areas in the winter of 2022.

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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 ...

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Top Cloud Initiative: Optimizing Existing Use of Cloud

Optimizing existing use of cloud is the top initiative — for the seventh year in a row, reported by 62% of respondents in the Flexera 2023 State of the Cloud Report.

"This is a watershed year for cloud usage, as the report findings demonstrate," said Brian Adler, Senior Director, Cloud Market Strategy at Flexera. "We saw FinOps continue to gain traction, cost management challenges pass security as the top cloud challenge for the first time, and artificial intelligence (AI) lead all plans and experimentation of public cloud services. As economic uncertainties wane in the months or years to come, companies will continue to lean into the cloud to transform their businesses, with the goal of finding competitive advantages."

Additional highlights of the report:

Managing cloud spend overtakes security as top cloud challenge

This year marks the first time in more than a decade that managing cloud spend has overtaken security as the top challenge facing organizations. As in previous years, a lack of resources/expertise also continues to be a significant challenge.

Organizations embracing multi-cloud

Respondents indicated a slight drift toward single public cloud usage, with multi-cloud decreasing from 89% last year to 87% this year. Single public cloud usage has increased to 11%, up from 9% last year.

Use of multi-cloud tools by large enterprises is higher for FinOps than for security

Across the board for all organizations, multi-cloud security tools continue to lead, followed closely by tools for multi-cloud cost optimization (FinOps). However, large enterprises reverse the order, with 68% using multi-cloud FinOps tools and 63% using multi-cloud security tools.

Siloed apps and disaster recovery (DR)/failover are the top multi-cloud implementations

Apps siloed on different clouds and DR/failover between clouds have remained the top two multi-cloud implementations. Intelligent workload placement is increasing the fastest (up 20% year over year).

AWS and Azure still lead overall

Last year was the first year Azure surpassed AWS in adoption rates, but as shown in the 2023 report respondents indicated AWS is back on top, with 47% using the provider in significant workloads and 41% using Azure. Oracle, IBM and Alibaba cloud services remained relatively unchanged.

AWS leads SMB public cloud adoption

SMBs (businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees) continue to favor AWS over other cloud providers, with 71% using AWS and 51% using Azure. Usage of Google Cloud Platform among SMBs has significantly decreased, from 43% to 28% year over year.

Big plans for AI

Similar to last year, data warehouse is the most commonly used PaaS offering, followed by DBaaS (relational). Machine learning/artificial intelligence is being experimented with more than any other service; not surprisingly, it’s also the leading PaaS offering that is being planned for use.

Economic uncertainty is growing cloud usage

45% of respondents said economic uncertainty would have very little impact on cloud usage and spend; 9% said they would lower cloud spending somewhat, and 1% said they would lower cloud spending significantly.

Methodology: The survey tapped 750 IT professionals and executive leaders worldwide representing a broad cross-section of industries and context areas in the winter of 2022.

Hot Topics

The Latest

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 ...

Image
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
Broadcom

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 ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...