Cloud Computing – Concepts

Flexera – 2020 State of the Cloud Report (excerpt)

As Cloud Use Grows, Organizations Focus on Cloud Costs and Governance
Original Article

84 percent of respondents have a multi-cloud strategy.
• 84 percent of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy.
• Enterprises with a hybrid strategy (combining public and private clouds) grows to 58 percent in 2019 from 51 percent in 2018, while the number of organizations with a strategy of multiple public clouds or multiple private clouds declines slightly.

94 percent of respondents use cloud.
• Public cloud adoption is 91 percent and private cloud adoption is 72 percent.
• 69 percent of respondents use at least one public and one private cloud.

Enterprises are prioritizing a balance of public and private clouds.
• Public cloud is the top priority of 31 percent of enterprises.
• Many companies are taking a balanced approach, with 28 percent prioritizing hybrid cloud and an additional 17 percent prioritizing public and private cloud equally.

Organizations leverage almost 5 clouds on average.
• Respondents are already running applications in a combination of 3.4 public and private clouds and experimenting with 1.5 more, for a total of 4.9 clouds.
• Among those using any public cloud, respondents are currently using 2.0 public clouds and experimenting with 1.8 more.
• Among those using any private cloud, respondents are currently using 2.7 private clouds and experimenting with 2.0 more.

Enterprise cloud spend is significant and growing quickly.
• Companies plan to spend 24 percent more on public cloud in 2019 vs. 2018.
• 13 percent of enterprises spend more than $12 million a year on public cloud, while 50 percent spend more than $1.2 million annually.
• Public cloud spend is growing 3 times faster than private cloud usage (24 percent vs. 8 percent).
• SMBs generally have fewer workloads overall and therefore smaller cloud bills, but 11 percent of SMBs still exceed $1.2 million in annual spend.

Companies run a majority of workloads in cloud.
• Respondents overall run 38 percent of workloads in public cloud and 41 percent in private cloud (which may include cloud-enabled virtual environments).
• Enterprises run 33 percent of workloads in public cloud and 46 percent in private cloud.
• SMBs run 43 percent of workloads in public cloud and 35 percent in private cloud.

Enterprise central IT focuses on managing and optimizing cloud costs.
• 66 percent of enterprises already have a central cloud team or cloud center of excellence, with another 21 percent planning one.
• Among SMBs, only 31 percent have a central cloud team.
• For enterprises, the top responsibilities of central IT are managing and optimizing cloud services costs (68 percent), deciding or advising on which applications to run in which clouds (62 percent), and setting policies for cloud use (59 percent).
• Within the enterprise, most of the responsibility for governing and optimizing cloud costs is falling on the central cloud team and the infrastructure and operations team, while business units frequently own the cloud budget.

Managing cloud spend and cloud governance are the top challenges for enterprises.
• Cloud cost management and cloud governance are top challenges regardless of cloud maturity.
• Among enterprises, optimizing cloud costs (84 percent in 2019 vs. 80 percent in 2018) and cloud governance (84 percent in 2019 vs. 77 percent in 2018) are growing challenges.
• Managing software licenses that are running in public cloud environments is also becoming a top-of-mind issue. Key challenges are understanding the cost implications of licensed software running in the cloud (52 percent), the complexity of license rules in public cloud (42 percent), and ensuring that they are following the rules (41 percent).

The #1 priority in 2020 is cloud cost optimization.
• Optimizing existing cloud use for cost savings continues to be the top initiative in 2019 for the third year in a row, increasing to 64 percent from 58 percent in 2018.
• The challenge of managing cloud spend grows as cloud use increases. While 64 percent of all respondents cite optimizing cloud spend as the top initiative, that number is even higher among intermediate and advanced cloud users at 70 percent and 76 percent, respectively.
• Other top initiatives include moving more workloads to cloud (58 percent), expanding the use of containers and adopting a cloud-first strategy (tied at 39 percent), and implementing automated policies for governance (35 percent).

Cloud Computing – Trends, Facts & Figures

AWS Pro Cert – Links Dashboard