Multicloud deployments become go-to strategy as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud grab wallet share
Enterprises are all-in on multicloud as 93% of companies have a strategy to use multiple providers as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud all vie for customers and grab more wallet share, according to Flexera's State of the Cloud report.
The findings highlight how multicloud is becoming the primary architecture choice as companies plan to mix clouds to avoid lock-in. Flexera had 750 respondents with 554 enterprises and 196 small and medium sized businesses. Of the respondents, 53% were advanced cloud users.
- Research: Multicloud deployment becomes new default for enterprise computing
- Free PDF download: Managing the mutlicloud
Flexera found that the top three public cloud providers remain AWS, Azure and Google, which has the fastest adoption in growth compared to a year ago. Flexera also found that Azure is narrowing the gap with AWS in the percentage of enterprises using it as well as the number of virtual machines.
Forty percent of AWS users spend at least $1.2 million annually with 36% spending that amount on Azure, according to Flexera.
To move their multicloud strategies along, Flexera found enterprises are betting heavily on containers. According to Flexera:
- 65% of organizations are using Docker for containers with 58% using Kubernetes.
- Container-as-a-service offerings from AWS, Azure and Google are all seeing strong growth.
- Enterprises say they are lacking in resources and expertise to deal with container challenges.
- And 33% of organizations use multicloud management tools.
COVID-19 may also accelerate shifts to the cloud. Flexera found at least half of companies are accelerating their cloud plans amid the COVID-19 pandemic and move to remote work. Indeed, 59% of enterprises say cloud usage will exceed prior plans due to the pandemic, according to Flexera.
Among other key findings:
- Respondents said more than 50% of enterprise workloads and data are expected to be in the public cloud within 12 months.
- SMBs are moving to the cloud at a faster rate with 70% of smaller enterprises saying data and workloads will be in the cloud in the next 12 months.
- 87% have a hybrid cloud strategy.
- 79% of respondents plan to optimize existing use of cloud for cost savings, with 61% focused on cloud migration.
- IoT is the top growing cloud platform as a service offering followed by container as a service, machine learning and AI, data warehouse and serverless.
- 73% of enterprises have a cloud team that is centralized and 51% use managed service providers to manage usage.
- 83% of respondents said security is their top challenge with 82% citing costs.
- 56% of organizations said understanding the cost implications of software licenses is a big cloud challenge. Respondents said 30% of cloud spend is wasted.
- Understanding app dependencies was the top challenge for cloud migrations followed by technical feasibility and assessing on-prem vs. cloud costs.
- Ansible and Terraform were the two most widely adopted configuration tools.
- 63% of enterprises are adopting relational DBaaS.
- VMware vSphere leads in private cloud adoption with Azure Stack and AWS Outpost showing strongest growth.
- 22% of enterprises spend more than $12 million a year on public cloud.
- Top cloud providers in 2020: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, hybrid, SaaS players
- Multicloud: Everything you need to know about the biggest trend in cloud computing
- Research: Multicloud deployment becomes new default for enterprise computing
- Free PDF download: Managing the mutlicloud
- Enterprise leader's guide to building a successful multicloud strategy
- Multicloud management tools: Your guide
- Why VMware's Kubernetes investment will shape your multicloud strategy
- CIO Jury: Only half of CIOs say cloud vendors are living up to their expectations
- How to build a successful disaster recovery plan using multicloud technology
- Multicloud security: How to secure your cloud infrastructure and keep the hackers at bay