2018 State of the Cloud Report Released by RightScale

RightScale has released its 2018 State of the Cloud Report. This is the seventh year that the cloud management firm has produced the report, which is based on the results of the largest survey of businesses on use of the cloud. This year the survey was conducted on 997 tech professionals from large enterprises and small enterprises, operating in a broad range of industries.

The report reveals average cloud spending by enterprises, how the cloud is being used, the challenges that must be overcome by enterprises, and the top cloud spending priorities in 2018.

The report revealed enterprises are planning on increasing cloud usage over the next 12 months, with rapid growth predicted for the coming year. Enterprises employing more than 1,000 staff have invested heavily in the cloud, with 26% of survey respondents now spending more than $6 million a year on the public cloud and a further 26% spending between $1.2 million and $6 million a year.

Over the course of the next 12 months, 20% of large enterprises expect cloud spending to double, with 17% expecting spending to increase between 50 and 100%.  Overall, 71% of all businesses expect their cloud spend to increase by at least 20% in the coming year.

The past 12 months have seen all cloud providers experience significant growth. AWS adoption rose from 57% to 64%, Azure adoption increased from 34% to 45%, Google Cloud increased from 15% to 18% and IBM Cloud increased from 8% to 10%.

While spending is increasing, many businesses are not getting particularly good value for money. RightScale’s figures show 35% of spending on the public cloud is wasted through poor optimization of cloud resources. It is therefore no surprise that the top priority for 58% of all cloud users is optimizing cloud resources and reducing cloud spending – up from 53% last year.

There is a growing trend for leveraging multiple clouds, with applications run in an average of 3.1 clouds, experimentation taking place on an average of 1.7 clouds, with enterprises using an average of 4.8 clouds.

In order to get the best ROI and improve efficiency, many businesses are creating a central cloud team or center of excellence that is responsible for planning cloud usage, determining which applications should be moved to the cloud, how cloud costs can be optimized, and the development of cloud policies. 57% of enterprises already have a central cloud team or center of excellence, with a further 24% of enterprises planning on implementing a cloud team in the near future.

The main challenges faced by enterprises are ensuring cloud security and reducing cloud spending. 77% of respondents said cloud security is a challenge, with 29% saying security is a major challenge. Optimizing cloud spending and improving ROI is a challenge for 76% of respondents, with 21% saying the management of cloud spending is a major challenge.

Author: Richard Anderson

Richard Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of NetSec.news