Skip to main content

Top Cloud Trends for 2025: Wrangling Cloud Spend, Expanding FinOps Teams, and Adopting GenAI

Brian Adler
Flexera

Cloud computing evolves rapidly, with each year bringing new technologies and trends that IT professionals must navigate. The Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report spotlights these pressures and how they are set to shape IT strategy in the year ahead, leveraging the expert insights of over 750 global cloud decision-makers.

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, this year's report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies.

Cloud Usage Continues to Grow Amid Repatriation Efforts

One thing is clear: organizations are still embracing the cloud. In fact, it seems that many have arrived at their steady state, having settled into an efficient and effective cloud environment that meets their standing needs. For most enterprises, this manifests in a hybrid cloud strategy with at least one public and one private cloud.

In particular, public cloud spend continues to increase. The report uncovered 33% of organizations are spending more than $12 million annually on public cloud alone, up from 29% last year. Among large enterprises, that figure increases to 40%. Along with these growing percentages, some organizations are exploring cloud repatriation.

Today, the current cloud inefficiencies and potential for cost savings are being factored into some IT decision discussions, as leaders consider the option of moving certain workloads from the cloud and back to on-premises data centers. However, this shift toward repatriation is happening slowly. Only 21% of cloud workloads have been repatriated, which is far outpaced by the rate of net-new cloud projects. Even with some moving their workloads to non-cloud environments, cloud usage is still on the rise — now and in the foreseeable future.

Cost Management and Security Sit Top of Mind

Year-over-year, managing cloud spend remains the top challenge for organizations. As additional workloads migrate to the cloud and the associated cost increases, so does the pressure to optimize that spend. A large majority (87%) of respondents cite "cost efficiency/savings" as their top metric for validating team success against cloud goals, further underscoring this narrative. Notably, this year, "cost avoidance," which can be achieved with proper license management, was resurgent among secondary progress metrics, rising from 28% to 64%.

The difficulty of accurate forecasting has also helped turn managing cloud spend into a perennial problem. Organizations are seeking to solve forecasting challenges — and overspending — with the use of FinOps teams. With the proper FinOps framework, organizations are empowered to maximize the business value of cloud, enable timely, data-driven decision making, and encourage cross-team collaboration for greater financial accountability. 86% of organizations either currently have a dedicated FinOps team responsible for some or all of their cloud cost optimization tasks or are planning to implement one within the next year and beyond. Understanding the value of these practices, the number of organizations not using a FinOps team dropped by 6 percentage points from 2024.

Beyond cloud spend, security also received a podium finish, coming in as the second-largest concern for cloud initiatives. In an age of increasingly advanced cyber threats, it's no surprise that security weighs heavy on the minds of many respondents. Specifically, 75% identified governance, managing software licenses, and a lack of resources and expertise as the main drivers behind security concerns.

Generative AI Is Here to Stay

Having dominated industry conversation over recent years, AI, especially generative AI (GenAI), is moving beyond hype to enterprise integration. An impressive 83% of organizations are already using or currently experimenting with GenAI — the most interest any new Platform-as-a-Service offering has generated in the State of the Cloud Report's 14-year history.

The rate of adoption will only continue to increase as the technology advances, becoming more accurate and widely incorporated in daily workflows, products, and services. Last year, 14% of organizations reported not using GenAI. This year, that figure has plummeted to just 1% of organizations. The use of data warehouse services also surged this year, and given they are often used to feed AI models, serves as yet another indicator that GenAI is clearly here to stay long-term.

What's Coming

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025 and beyond, cloud initiatives will be defined by this skyrocketing interest in emerging technologies like GenAI, and the need to optimize spend associated with growing cloud usage. In the coming years, FinOps is likely to emerge as the new normal for combating cost challenges.

Understanding cloud usage and mastering cloud management isn't an easy task, but it can be done with proper oversight and a team of collaborative professionals. It remains to be seen what technologies pass the tipping point from novel to necessity and continue to make an impact. 

Brian Adler is Senior Director of Cloud Market Strategy at Flexera

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

Top Cloud Trends for 2025: Wrangling Cloud Spend, Expanding FinOps Teams, and Adopting GenAI

Brian Adler
Flexera

Cloud computing evolves rapidly, with each year bringing new technologies and trends that IT professionals must navigate. The Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report spotlights these pressures and how they are set to shape IT strategy in the year ahead, leveraging the expert insights of over 750 global cloud decision-makers.

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, this year's report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies.

Cloud Usage Continues to Grow Amid Repatriation Efforts

One thing is clear: organizations are still embracing the cloud. In fact, it seems that many have arrived at their steady state, having settled into an efficient and effective cloud environment that meets their standing needs. For most enterprises, this manifests in a hybrid cloud strategy with at least one public and one private cloud.

In particular, public cloud spend continues to increase. The report uncovered 33% of organizations are spending more than $12 million annually on public cloud alone, up from 29% last year. Among large enterprises, that figure increases to 40%. Along with these growing percentages, some organizations are exploring cloud repatriation.

Today, the current cloud inefficiencies and potential for cost savings are being factored into some IT decision discussions, as leaders consider the option of moving certain workloads from the cloud and back to on-premises data centers. However, this shift toward repatriation is happening slowly. Only 21% of cloud workloads have been repatriated, which is far outpaced by the rate of net-new cloud projects. Even with some moving their workloads to non-cloud environments, cloud usage is still on the rise — now and in the foreseeable future.

Cost Management and Security Sit Top of Mind

Year-over-year, managing cloud spend remains the top challenge for organizations. As additional workloads migrate to the cloud and the associated cost increases, so does the pressure to optimize that spend. A large majority (87%) of respondents cite "cost efficiency/savings" as their top metric for validating team success against cloud goals, further underscoring this narrative. Notably, this year, "cost avoidance," which can be achieved with proper license management, was resurgent among secondary progress metrics, rising from 28% to 64%.

The difficulty of accurate forecasting has also helped turn managing cloud spend into a perennial problem. Organizations are seeking to solve forecasting challenges — and overspending — with the use of FinOps teams. With the proper FinOps framework, organizations are empowered to maximize the business value of cloud, enable timely, data-driven decision making, and encourage cross-team collaboration for greater financial accountability. 86% of organizations either currently have a dedicated FinOps team responsible for some or all of their cloud cost optimization tasks or are planning to implement one within the next year and beyond. Understanding the value of these practices, the number of organizations not using a FinOps team dropped by 6 percentage points from 2024.

Beyond cloud spend, security also received a podium finish, coming in as the second-largest concern for cloud initiatives. In an age of increasingly advanced cyber threats, it's no surprise that security weighs heavy on the minds of many respondents. Specifically, 75% identified governance, managing software licenses, and a lack of resources and expertise as the main drivers behind security concerns.

Generative AI Is Here to Stay

Having dominated industry conversation over recent years, AI, especially generative AI (GenAI), is moving beyond hype to enterprise integration. An impressive 83% of organizations are already using or currently experimenting with GenAI — the most interest any new Platform-as-a-Service offering has generated in the State of the Cloud Report's 14-year history.

The rate of adoption will only continue to increase as the technology advances, becoming more accurate and widely incorporated in daily workflows, products, and services. Last year, 14% of organizations reported not using GenAI. This year, that figure has plummeted to just 1% of organizations. The use of data warehouse services also surged this year, and given they are often used to feed AI models, serves as yet another indicator that GenAI is clearly here to stay long-term.

What's Coming

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025 and beyond, cloud initiatives will be defined by this skyrocketing interest in emerging technologies like GenAI, and the need to optimize spend associated with growing cloud usage. In the coming years, FinOps is likely to emerge as the new normal for combating cost challenges.

Understanding cloud usage and mastering cloud management isn't an easy task, but it can be done with proper oversight and a team of collaborative professionals. It remains to be seen what technologies pass the tipping point from novel to necessity and continue to make an impact. 

Brian Adler is Senior Director of Cloud Market Strategy at Flexera

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...