Flexera Releases 2020 State of the Cloud Report

The survey results are available in the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report, which can be downloaded at https://info.flexera.com/SLO-CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud-2020

The report explores the thinking of 750 global cloud decision-makers and users regarding public, private and multi-cloud options and shares their current and future cloud adoption.

“The State of the Cloud survey captures insights into how organizations are progressing in their journey to cloud,” said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Flexera. “That journey is even more important for businesses today as we face the unprecedented operational impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With employees working from home and more business interactions going digital,” Ryan continued, “more than half of enterprise respondents said their cloud usage will be higher than originally planned at the beginning of the year due to the pandemic. Companies plan to migrate more services to cloud, yet they’re already exceeding cloud budgets. They will need to focus on optimizing workloads as they migrate in addition to cost management and governance to ensure operational efficiency.”

A few key highlights from the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report:

• Organizations embrace multi-cloud
  • 93% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy; 87% have a hybrid cloud strategy
  • Respondents use an average of 2.2 public clouds and 2.2 private clouds
• Public cloud adoption continues to accelerate
  • Twenty percent of enterprises spend more than $12 million per year on public cloud
  • More than 50 percent of enterprise workloads and data are expected to be in a public cloud within 12 months
  • 59% of enterprises expect cloud usage to exceed prior plans due to COVID-19
  • The top challenge in cloud migration is understanding application dependencies
• Cloud cost optimization
  • Organizations are over budget for cloud spend by an average of 23 percent, and expect cloud spend to increase by 47 percent next year
  • Respondents estimate that 30 percent of cloud spend is wasted
• Cloud initiatives and metrics
  • 73% of organizations plan to optimize existing use of cloud (cost savings), making it the top initiative for the fourth year in a row
  • 61% percent of organizations plan to focus on cloud migration
  • 77% of organizations use cost efficiency and savings to measure cloud progress
• Organizational approach to cloud
  • 73% of enterprises have a central cloud team or cloud center of excellence
  • 57% of cloud teams are responsible for governing infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)/platform-as-a-service (PaaS) usage costs
• Cloud challenges
  • 83% of enterprises indicate that security is a challenge, followed by 82 percent for managing cloud spend and 79 percent for governance
  • For cloud beginners, lack of resources/expertise is the top challenge; for advanced cloud users, managing cloud spend is the top challenge
  • 56% of organizations report that understanding cost implications of software licenses is a challenge for software in the cloud

The report leveraged a panel of 750 technical professionals from around the globe and across a broad cross-section of industries, providing insight into their adoption of cloud infrastructure. The independent panel comprises vetted respondents with detailed profiles and is rigorously maintained. The survey was conducted in the first quarter of 2020.

Complete results and highlights are available in the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report. The report results are made available under an Open Source Creative Commons License so the data may be freely shared with the required attribution.

For more information on the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report:

• Download the report here
• Sign up for the report webinar here