Flexera Releases 2021 State of the Cloud Report

Flexera, the company that helps organizations maximize the value of their technology investments, today releases the findings from the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report (formerly the RightScale State of the Cloud Report). For the past ten years, the report has looked into all things cloud and has helped IT professionals plan the next steps in their cloud journey. This year’s report delves into the details to understand the ins and outs of all things cloud – from spend allocation to cost management and cloud strategies.

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The report explores what 750 global cloud decision makers and users are thinking about the public, private and multi-cloud market. It shares their current and future cloud strategies, often showing year-over-year changes to help identify trends.

“COVID-19 has accelerated the migration to cloud computing,” said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Flexera. “Still, cloud isn’t magic or the land of milk and honey. Companies are moving fast, facing challenges, and trying to connect cloud computing to business outcomes.

“The Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report shows that the appetite for digital transformation is high,” Ryan continued, “but real-world challenges—such as managing security and optimizing cloud spend—still must be addressed.”

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A few key highlights from the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report: 

• Enterprises embrace multi-cloud
  • 92 percent of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy; 80 percent have a hybrid cloud strategy
  • 49 percent silo workloads by cloud with 45 percent integrating data between clouds
  • Respondents use an average of 2.6 public and 2.7 private clouds
• Public cloud adoption continues to accelerate
  • 31 percent of enterprises spend more than $12 million a year on public cloud
  • 54 percent of enterprise workloads are expected to be in public cloud in 12 months
  • 90 percent of respondents who answered a question about COVID-19 expect cloud use to exceed plans due to the pandemic
• Understanding cloud initiatives and metrics
  • 61 percent overall plan to optimize cloud costs in 2021, making it a top initiative for the fifth year in a row
  • 59 percent of advanced users name cloud migration as a key initiative
  • 76 percent overall use cost efficiency and saving to measure cloud progress
• Organizations taking a centralized approach to cloud
  • 75 percent of enterprises have a central cloud team or center of excellence
  • 54 percent of cloud teams are responsible for governing IaaS/PaaS usage and costs
  • 63 percent of enterprises report using cloud managed service providers for public cloud use
• AWS leads, Azure continues to narrow the gap
  • All seven of the cloud providers tracked in the State of the Cloud Report experienced growth. AWS adoption grew to 77 percent (from 76 percent last year); Azure grew to 73 percent (from 63 percent last year); Google Cloud grew to 47 percent (from 35 percent last year); VMware Cloud on AWS grew to 24 percent (from 17 percent last year); Oracle Infrastructure Cloud grew to 29 percent (from 17 percent last year); IBM Public Cloud grew to 24 percent (from 13 percent last year); and Alibaba Cloud grew to 12 percent (from 7 percent last year).

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 fourth quarter of 2020.

Complete results and highlights are available in the Flexera 2021 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.