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55 Cloud Computing Statistics That Will Blow Your Mind (Updated 2023)

Discover over 55 cloud statistics, including stats around forecasts, cloud waste reports, cloud cost optimization efforts, and data on hybrid cloud adoption rates.

Is your current cloud cost tool giving you the cost intelligence you need?  Most tools are manual, clunky, and inexact. Discover how CloudZero takes a new  approach to organizing your cloud spend.Click here to learn more.

It happened and continues to happen — even faster now. Before 2020, cloud computing was already booming. But as remote work boomed in the following two years, it accelerated exponentially.

Some companies have since returned to the office. Others are adopting hybrid models, where staff alternate between working from home and in the office.

But there’s more to the rise and rise of cloud computing than remote working.

Cloud infrastructure also supports big data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) models, Internet of Things (IoT), and Business Intelligence (BI). So, we compiled these astounding cloud computing statistics from reliable sources to share with you.

We also include tips, tricks, and tools to make cloud computing work for you — yes, that includes how to manage and optimize your cloud costs across AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and Snowflake in a single place.

Table Of Contents

Top Picks

  • Globally, the cloud computing market will surpass $1 trillion by 2028. (Precedence Research)
  • The global cloud computing market grew from $24.63 billion in 2010 to $156.4 billion in 2020. That’s a 635% jump.
  • Only 3 out of 10 organizations know exactly where their cloud costs are going (CloudZero, The State Of Cloud Cost Intelligence 2022 Report)
  • A cloud bill can comprise hundreds of millions or billions of rows of data (FinOps Certification)
  • An Amazon Cost & Usage Report is too large to load into Excel all at once. Instead, Amazon splits its monthly CUR into many separate files. Good luck understanding them. (FinOps Certification)
  • 97% of enterprise cloud apps are unsanctioned, because departments, teams, or employees purchase new tools to support their productivity efforts. (Osterman Research)
  • Modernizing and integrating apps with public cloud services is a top priority in the next three years. (VMware)
  • You can reduce your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by as much as 40% by migrating your business to the public cloud (Accenture).
  • 80% of organizations are using multiple public or private clouds. (Virtana)
  • The world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. (Osterman Research)
  • Fun Fact: A “FinOps Hug”: A state of harmony between finance and engineering teams.

Let's dive right into it, shall we?

Cloud Adoption Stats: How Many Companies Use Cloud Computing?

Most organizations, particularly enterprises, have at least some of their workloads in the cloud.

1. More than 90% of organizations use the cloud (Source: O-Reilley)

O'Reilly's latest Cloud Adoption report had some interesting numbers. Consider this:

  • About two-thirds of respondents currently operate in a public cloud and 45% use a private cloud — versus 55% who still rely on traditionally managed on-premises systems.
  • 48% plan to migrate at least half of their applications to the cloud in the next year; 20% intend to move all their applications to the cloud.
  • 47% are pursuing a cloud-first strategy; 30% are already cloud native; 37% intend to be cloud-native in about three years.
  • Only 5% plan on switching from the cloud to on-premises infrastructure (cloud repatriation).

2. Cloud-based workloads account for 75% of workloads in 1 out of 5 organizations (Source: Fortinet 2021)

About 39% of respondents are already running at least half of their workload on the cloud. Another 58% said they planned to run that much workload in the cloud in the next 12-18 months.

Share of workloads in the cloud

Credit: Fortinet’s survey of the percentage of workloads businesses run in the cloud in 2022

By 2023, 31% of organizations expect to run 75% of their workloads in the cloud. Some 27% of them plan to run at least 50% of their business processes in the cloud by then.

3. Cloud adoption among enterprise organizations is over 94% (Source: RightScale)

More than 94% of organizations with more than 1,000 employees have a lot of their workloads in the cloud, according to this survey of 800 organizations. The latest edition shows enterprise cloud computing continues to grow rapidly — and then some. For example:

  • More enterprises are exploring a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud approach rather than just using a public cloud or private cloud strategy. More on this later.
  • 54% will move their workloads to the public cloud in 12 months.

There’s more.

4. Organizations with 1,000 or fewer staff invest big in the cloud (Source: TechRepublic)

About 44% of traditional small businesses use cloud infrastructure or hosting services. That's compared to 66% of small tech companies and 74% of enterprises.

There is one more thing. The public cloud will host 63% of SMB workloads and 62% of SMB data within the next year.

5. The U.S. and Western Europe still dominate cloud computing (Source: ReportLinker)

Combined, these two regions account for 82% of the world's cloud computing. This chart shows cloud adoption by country and region according to Gartner:

Cloud spending rates and growth highlights

Credit: Gartner 2022

Why Are Companies Adopting Cloud Computing So Fast?

Organizations are moving to the cloud for a variety of compelling reasons. Cloud computing offers several powerful benefits, including:

6. Cloud computing boosts gross margins and profitability (Source: Wipro FullStride)

In its global survey of 1,300 C-Suite executives, Wipro FullStride Cloud Services showed that a well-executed move to digital increased revenue and profitability.

While SaaS companies reported the highest margins, others also enjoyed notable gains. As an example, finance executives reported revenue increases of up to 15% and profitability increases of up to 4%.

Another survey by Deloitte showed small and medium businesses that used cloud computing made 21% more profit and grew 26% faster.

7. Cloud computing generates more revenue (Source: Infosys)

The survey also noted that migrating to the cloud helps unlock additional revenue streams that can boost profit growth by as much as 11.2% year-over-year.

Here’s the kicker. The survey concluded that your organization needs to have at least 60% of its workload in the cloud to realize noteworthy financial gains.

8. Achieve faster time to market (Source: IBM)

Some 65% of respondents who identified as “Optimizers” told IBM that cloud computing helped them reduce time to market. Check this out:

Bar Chart

Credit: IBM’s Beyond Agility - How Cloud is Driving Enterprise Innovation Report

9. Reduce startup costs (Source: OpsRamp)

Cloud computing reduces upfront startup costs, including setup and maintenance costs.

  • 94% of IT professionals in an OpsRamp survey said that is true for them.
  • Accenture also found that moving workloads to the public cloud lead to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings of 30-40%.

Also, operating in the cloud converts your Capital Expenditure (CapEx) to Operating Expenditure (OpEx), freeing more resources to fund your operations and growth.

10. 6 in 10 CxOs say cloud computing improves security (Source: Oracle)

Security is the top benefit of cloud computing, according to 60% of C-Suite executives — ahead of cost savings, scalability, ease of maintenance, and speed.

Vertical Bar Chart of Benifits

Credit: Oracle’s Security in the Age of AI Report

It makes sense, considering they also cited human error as the most significant threat to security. The cloud supports automation, which reduces the risk of human errors that cause security breaches.

Vertical Bar Chart

Credit: Oracle

11. Moving to the cloud improves business resilience (Source: Aberdeen)

Cloud-based solutions support business resilience best practices such as remote working, pivoting to a new business model, and disaster recovery.

For example, Aberdeen found that cloud-based businesses could resolve disaster recovery issues in just 2.1 hours, as opposed to 8 hours for businesses that didn’t use cloud services.

12. The cloud boosts flexibility (Source: OpsRamp)

Out of 137 IT executives surveyed, 115 said they planned to migrate more workloads to the cloud in the next 24 months.

  • 62% said they’ll do so for more flexibility and scalability.
  • 47% cited wanting more cost management using elastic resource provisioning.

13. Migrating to the cloud reduces carbon emissions by 84% (Source: Accenture)

According to Accenture, organizations with persistently high environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores enjoyed 4.7x larger operating margins versus low ESG performers between 2013 and 2019.

By moving to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), eco-friendly brands can reduce carbon emissions by up to 84% and energy consumption by up to 64%.

Accenture made this chart to compare carbon emissions between cloud vs on-premises operations:

Chart showing use cases

Credit: Accenture

Cloud Spending Statistics

All sizes of organizations are making significant investments in cloud computing to take advantage of its benefits. You can see what that looks like here:

14. Over 50% of SME's technology budget will go to cloud spend in 2023 (Source: Zesty)

SMEs spent 47% of their technology budgets on cloud services in 2022, a 67% increase from 2021 to 2022. In 2023, their cloud investment will surpass 50% of their tech budget.

15. Cloud spending to reach nearly $600 Billion in 2023 (Source: Gartner)

In 2023, Gartner estimates global end-user spending on public clouds will reach over $599 billion, up from $421 billion in 2021 and nearly $500 billion in 2022.

Cloud Spending Forcast Table

Credit: Gartner’s Worldwide end-user cloud spend forecast 2021 -2023

The forecast also shows IaaS, DaaS, and PaaS, respectively, will see the highest growth in spend during the period.

16. 31% of enterprises spend over $12 million on public cloud services every year (Source: RightScale 2022)

Most enterprises have a lot of workloads running in the cloud — and they are investing to host it there. This survey shows enterprise plan to increase their cloud budgets to support this drive into the future.

17. 54% of small and medium-sized businesses spend more than $1.2 million on the cloud (Source: RightScale)

RightScales’s findings also show a noteworthy increase in SMBs that spend more that $1.2 million annually compared to 38% two years ago.

Also, IDC predicts SMBs will increase their cloud spend by 31% to support further adoption.

18. Cloud costs are higher than expected for 6 in 10 organizations (Source: CloudZero)

As companies invest more in the cloud, only 4 in 10 organizations have their cloud costs around where they expect.

Some 490 out of 1,000 respondents said their cloud costs were a little higher that where they should be while 110 reported cloud costs were way too high.

Pie Chart showing cloud costs

Credit: CloudZero’s 2022 State of Cloud Cost Intelligence Report

19. 71% of organizations expect their cloud spend to increase (Source: Flexera)

Some 58% of all respondents in the survey of 501 IT executives worldwide expect a slight increase in cloud spending. Some 13% of them expect a significant increase. Compare that to just 2% who expect a significant decrease and 10% who expect a slight decrease in their cloud spend.

Horizontal Bar Chart

Credit: 2022 Tech Spend Pulse

20. 58.7% of IT spending is still traditional but cloud-based spending will soon outpace it (Source: Gartner)

According to Gartner, traditional IT spending still dominates cloud spending. However, its 2019-2025 forecast predicts cloud-based spending will continue to grow while traditional IUT spending will continue to shrink, eventually falling behind cloud spend from 2025.

Sizing cloud shift Charts

Credit: Gartner forecast on cloud spending growth vs traditional IT spending until 2025

But is all this spending really worth it? What kind of returns are companies getting from their cloud investments?

World Wide Waste: Cloud Waste is a Big Problem

Cloud waste is shockingly prevalent today:

21. 32% of a cloud budget went to waste (Source: Flexera)

Cloud waste averaged 30% of companies’ cloud budgets in 2021, according to Flexera. In 2022, that figure jumped to 32%. Considering Gartner’s estimation that cloud spend reached nearly $500 billion in 2022, that 2% increase might represent a massive amount of money in wasted cloud spend.

Wasted Cloud Spend Pie Chart

Credit: Wasted cloud spend, State of the Cloud Report by Flexera

22. 75% of organizations report an increase in cloud waste (Source: StormForge)

Most companies reported that as their cloud spend increased, so did their cloud waste. The StormForge survey of 131 IT professionals shows cloud waste could be as high as 47% of a cloud budget.

23. 49% of cloud-based businesses struggle to control cloud costs (Source: Anodot)

There’s more:

  • In 54% of cases, cloud waste stems from a lack of visibility into cloud costs.
  • According to 44% of executives, at least a third of their cloud spend is wasted.
  • Complex cloud pricing is a challenge for 50% of respondents.
  • Nearly half of respondents said managing multicloud environments is challenging.

These challenges make controlling cloud costs even more difficult.

24. 42% of CIOs and CTOs consider cloud waste the top challenge (Source: Zesty)

Some 42% of CIOs and CTOs struggle to manage resource usage.

Often, waste occurs from overprovisioning and inability to scale rapidly. This led to a 67% annual increase in amounts allocated to cloud services, increasing to 47% in 2022 from 29% in 2021.

Also, 58% of respondents said the most challenging aspect of managing cloud costs was finding the right cloud offering for their workload.

25. Over half of enterprises are struggling to see cloud ROI (Source: PwC)

About 53% of enterprises were yet to see “substantial value” from their investment in the cloud.

Average Value Realization Gap Chart

Credit: How much value do companies see from cloud investments? - PwC research

This is true for many organizations — and it can be aggravating for companies that moved to the cloud for cost savings.

26. 1-3 years is the average payback period for cloud investment (Source: McKinsey)

Firms like McKinsey show companies might not see cloud benefits immediately. Instead, they can expect to gain significant benefits within 1-3 years of implementing cloud computing best practices.

Mckinsey & Company

Credit: McKinsey’s

Cloud Cost Optimization Statistics

With cloud spend wastage on the rise, many companies are seeking to reduce and optimize cloud costs to maximize their returns. The following revelations are mind-blowing:

27. 7 out of 10 companies aren't sure what they spend their cloud budget on (Source: CloudZero)

The 2022 State Of Cloud Cost Intelligence Report shows that only 30% of surveyed organizations knew where their cloud budget was going exactly — a truly grim picture of cost attribution in the cloud.

Cost of different aspects of business chart

This means most companies struggle to allocate cloud costs accurately because they are not sure what, why, and who drives their cloud costs.

Also, the larger the company, the bigger the cost visibility problem was:

Vertical Bar Chart

Compared to smaller organizations, larger organizations often have less understanding of how much exactly they spend on various business aspects.

The challenge highlights the need to adopt a robust cloud cost optimization solution like CloudZero. CloudZero’s cloud cost intelligence approach breaks down complex cloud bills into unit costs you actually care about and can make sense of. It then presents that data to you as:

  • Cost per customer
  • Cost per software or product feature
  • Cost per team
  • Cost per environment
  • Cost per engineering project
  • Cost per deployment, and more

The result: CloudZero empowers you to not only tell what, why, and who is driving your cloud costs, but to also connect your cloud costs to your business goals. That means CloudZero helps you pinpoint where to reduce usage or increase investment to cut costs or increase ROI, respectively.

Schedule a demo here to see CloudZero in action.

28. 78% noticed cloud cost variance late (Source: CloudZero)

Only 22% of respondents said were unable to detect cloud cost anomalies instantly or within minutes. Some 8% of respondents said they noticed cost anomalies after a week or more, 14% after days, and 56% in hours.

29. Only 23% see less than 5% cloud cost variance (Source: CloudZero)

In terms of how much cloud cost variance organizations are seeing, CloudZero found:

  • 60 out of 1,000 respondents experienced more than 30% variance.
  • About 230 saw cloud costs variance of between 15-29%.
  • More than 480 saw cost anomalies that ranged between 55 and 14%.

Check this out:

Cloud cost variance Pie Chart

Cloud cost variance among respondents

30. 49% of business leaders cite measuring value as a major barrier to achieving cloud ROI (Source: PwC)

In addition, 48% of CFOs lack confidence in their ability to measure cloud ROI.

We see this as yet another cloud cost visibility issue because once you understand who, what, why, and how you spend your cloud budget, it is much easier to determine whether your investment is paying off.

For example, you can identify which processes, teams, or products consume the most cloud resources, analyze each one’s return on investment, and cut their spending in favor of the best performers.

31. 24% measure cloud value in terms of faster innovation and delivery (Source: PwC)

Some 126 out of 524 technology leaders at Fortune 1000 companies told PwC that faster innovation and faster service/product delivery was the top way they measured the value of the cloud — followed by improved operational resiliency.

Bar Chart Measuring Cloud Value

Credit: PwC Cloud Business Survey

32. 59% use 3+ tools to manage and optimize their cloud (Source: Anodot)

This makes it tough to collect, analyze, and understand cloud resource usage with accuracy, let alone optimize utilization. Add to that adopting complex cloud-native technologies such as containers, Kubernetes, and microservices, and tracking costs becomes even more complicated.

33. 63% of tech execs say cloud cost optimization is still key in 2023 (Source: Zesty)

The leaders are prioritizing cloud cost optimization to maximize their Cloud ROI. Since at least three years ago, most organizations with workloads in the cloud have made this a top priority, along with cloud security.

Statistics On Cloud Service Providers

The cloud computing market continues to attract more players and shift market share among them.

34. Amazon Web Services dominates with 34% market share (Source: Synergy Research Group)

AWS still holds over a third of the cloud services market:

    • In Q2 2022, AWS commanded 34% of the cloud market, a 1% increase year-over-year. Azure is second with 21% of the market, followed by Google Cloud (10%), Alibaba (5%), and IBM (4%).
    • Amazon's revenue from AWS grew from 5.62% in 2014 to 13.24% in 2021.
    • The survey also showed the cloud market continues to grow 34% year-over-year.
  • Fun fact: It took Netflix seven years to migrate to AWS.

Market Share Trend Graphs

Credit: Cloud services market share in Q2, 2022

35. Competition between Azure and AWS is rife

Picture this:

Cloud Adoption Rate Bar Chart

  • 83% enterprises use Azure vs. 77%.
  • Enterprises are running more VMs on Azure than they are on AWS — 71% run more than 51 VMs on Azure vs 69% of enterprise that run VMs on AWS

Flexera also found 53% of enterprise users on Azure spend over $1.2 million each year vs. 52% on AWS.

36. 54% of respondents use three different cloud storage providers (Source: GoodFirms)

The research firm had some interesting findings:

  • About 300 out of 600 respondents said they use cloud storage for work although personal usage is on the rise.
  • Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and iCloud make the four most used personal cloud storage services.
  • 87.96% use cloud storage for website purpose compared to mobile apps at 89.35% and 10.65% for desktop apps.

The research also found that younger individuals were more likely to use cloud storage for personal use rather than for work purposes.

Statistics Cloud Computing Models: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

Led by SaaS, cloud services growth is booming in all areas, including relatively new ones, like Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Business Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS). In fact, Synergy Research Group reported the cloud market grew by 34% in Q1, 2022 and 29% in Q2, 2022.

It is also true that some cloud delivery models are growing more rapidly than others.

37. SaaS dominates cloud services delivery models (Source: Gartner)

The cloud application services market generated over $152 billion in end-user spending in 2021, by far the leader compared to IaaS ($91 billion), and PaaS ($86 billion). Gartner forecasts SaaS will generate more than $208 billion in end-user spending in 2023.

Cloud Spending Forcast Table

Credit: Cloud services growth forecast in 2023 - Gartner

38. IaaS to grow fastest at over 30%

The cloud applications infrastructure market will experience the fastest end-user growth from 2022, followed by DaaS (26.6%) and PaaS (26.1%), according to the Gartner forecast.

39. Google cloud’s IaaS is growing the fastest at 63% (Source: Gartner)

While AWS dominated IaaS with a 38.9% market share in 2020/2021, GCP’s IaaS offering grew 63.7% followed by Huawei Cloud (56.3%), Azure (51.3%), and Alibaba Cloud (41.9%). AWS grew 35.6% between 2020 and 2021.

Cloud Spending Forcast Table

Credit: IaaS market share growth 2020/2021

Cloud Computing Strategy Statistics: Public Vs. Private Vs. Hybrid Vs. Multicloud

Organizations are using two or more clouds at the same time for a variety of reasons, as you'll see here.

40. Multicloud and hybrid cloud statistics

Going hybrid or multicloud is not just about preventing vendor lock-in. Most organizations deploy a hybrid cloud (39% vs 36% last year) or a multicloud strategy (33%) to leverage multiple services, achieve scalability, or support business continuity.

Cloud Deplyment Strategy Percentag Bar

Credit: Fortinet

  • Typically, organizations deploy or test on 3.4 public clouds and 3.9 private clouds (Flexera).
  • 4 out of 5 companies use two or more IaaS or PaaS providers. Some 86% have at least 11 SaaS providers, and a third have more than 50.
  • 80% of organizations use multiple public cloud providers (Virtana)

As a result, respondents told Virtana they had difficulty visualizing and controlling costs across multiple public and private clouds:

Virtana State Of Hybrid Cloud

Credit: Virtana State of Hybrid Cloud

41. Public vs. private cloud statistics

Picture this:

  • Sixty-seven percent of respondents say they use a public cloud, 55% maintain their own infrastructure on-premises, and 45% of organizations use a private cloud (O’Reilly)
  • Only 8% of organizations use just a single public IaaS provider (Cisco)

Experts also expect cloud strategies to evolve from 'private' or 'public', to 'dedicated' or 'shared'.

42. 59% of tech Leaders use hybrid or multicloud for security (Source: Zesty)

CIOs, CTOs, and other tech leaders said they don't want to depend on one vendor's security protocols and believe their data is safer with multiple cloud providers.

  • 56% of respondents said they wanted the unique technological advantages that a specific cloud provider offered
  • 395 cited cost efficiency as a reason for adopting a hybrid cloud or multicloud strategy

So, which cloud provider dominates the private cloud market?

43. Azure dominates the private cloud now (Source: Flexera)

Microsoft Azure Stack usage grew to 37% in 2022 to dislodge VMware vSphere (31%) from the top spot, according to the State of the Cloud Report.

How Many Applications Do Companies Have in the Cloud?

Cloud usage statistics show evidence of SaaS sprawl, for example. Here are the findings:

44. A typical company is using 254 SaaS apps (Source: Productiv)

The average company has 254 SaaS apps, while enterprises have 364, according to a Productiv study of over 30,000 apps.

  • The average engagement over 60 days of licensed employees was 45%.
  • That suggests that less than half use their app licenses regularly.

Notably, tools purchased outside of IT scored higher at 54% engagement. This may suggest employees find more value in the tools they choose on their own.

45. The typical employee is dabbling in 36 cloud-based services in a day on average

There’s more:

  • The average department now has 40-60 tools, however cross-functional apps are the most popular.
  • The average number of apps in the security, engineering, and IT departments is higher at 78, 77, and 61, respectively.
  • IT departments do not own or manage 56% of SaaS applications.

So, which companies experience the most sprawl?

46. Most sprawl occurs in smaller, high-growth organizations

The reason for this may be because they are growing faster, with faster-evolving SaaS portfolios. The findings were as follows:

  • 68% SaaS sprawl for companies with less than 500 employees.
  • 52% SaaS sprawl for companies with less than 2,000 employees.
  • 52% SaaS sprawl for companies with more than 2,000 employees.

Overall cloud services usage is likely to increase as cloud spend increases vs. on-premises spend as you can see in the next section.

On-Premises Spending Vs. Cloud Spend: What Share Of IT Spending Is Cloud-Based?

Even though on-premises spending still dominates IT spending, the gap is narrowing. Fast.

47. $8 out of every $10 for IT spend goes to cloud services (Source: McKinsey)

In 2024, most enterprises plan to spend $8 out of every $10 on cloud-based IT hosting. A separate Morgan Stanley survey found that cloud computing will see the highest growth in IT spending in 2022.

48. Traditional IT spending to shrink by 32% (Source: Morgan Stanley)

By 2022, only about 32% of all enterprise applications was expected to run on traditional servers, down from 50% in 2019, when companies preferred to own and operate onsite data centers. That shrinkage is likely to increase further in the next three years.

49. 51% of IT spending is shifting to the public cloud (Source: Gartner)

The public cloud will replace traditional solutions for apps, infrastructure, business process services, and system infrastructure by 2025, compared to 41% in 2022.

  • The amount spent on application software will increase from 57.7% to 65.9% in 2025.
  • The percentage of cloud-based application software expenditures will rise from 57.7% in 2022 to 65.9% in 2025.

That said, which sectors of the economy are driving cloud services growth?

Which Industries Use Cloud Services The Most?

While cloud adoption statistics show all industries are embracing cloud services, a closer look shows some sectors invested much more than others.

50. Retail & Ecommerce is the Most Proactive Cloud Services User

O’Reilly’s Cloud Adoption survey found the most proactive cloud usage by industry came from Retail & Ecommerce, Finance & Banking, and Technology (software). Government (16%) and electronics & hardware (25%) used cloud services the least in 2022.

Cloud Security Statistics

Cloud computing security remains one of the most concerning aspects of operation — and a key barrier to cloud migration for some. Here are some things you need to know.

51. 95% of companies are concerned (Source: Fortinet)

Fortinet reported that almost everyone is moderately or extremely concerned about security in the cloud.

Percentage Concerned about cloud security

The concern is justified, considering that:

  • Cybercrime costs an organization about $13.0 million on average (Accenture).
  • The cost of a data breach in 2022 was $4.35 million on average, with healthcare breaches costing the most at $10.10 million (IBM).
  • Ransomware makes up 28% of attacks (IBM).
  • Data breaches exposed more than 22 billion records. The breaches occurred through 4,145 publicly disclosed breaches, down 5% from 2020, but likely to increase 5% in 2022 and beyond (Risk Based Security and FlashPoint).
  • 73% believe cloud technology has created more complexity. The survey also found that 70% of CIOs think cloud technologies mean they have less control (Fujitsu and Vitreous World).
  • IT downtime costs on average $5,600 per minute, which is crippling for companies reliant on online access, like Ecommerce players. Meanwhile, stricter regulations require organizations to take legal responsibility for their customer data, raising the stakes.
  • It takes almost two hours on average to resolve server downtime (Veeam).
  • Yet, a single hour of downtime costs companies over $100,000 according to 98% of surveyed leaders. Some 40% of enterprises lost $1-$5 million in just one hour of downtime. That excludes legal fees, fines, or penalties.

52. 46% of European companies store all their data in the cloud (Source: Thales)

Thales Europe found that 43% of the data is classified as 'sensitive'. In spite of a quarter of companies admitting to breaches in the last year, only 54% of this sensitive data is encrypted.

53. Misconfiguration is responsible for 68% of issues (Source: Fortinet)

Organizations ranked the following threats as the most significant security threats to their public clouds:

  • Misconfiguration (68%)
  • Unauthorized access (58%)
  • Insecure interfaces (52%)
  • Hijacking of accounts (50%)

Meanwhile, most apps have fewer than three security certifications, while IT-owned apps are more likely to use SSO. Similarly, many organizations had not prioritized cybersecurity and compliance:

Bar Chart

But, more organizations are implementing zero trust policies to improve their cloud security, according to Fortinet:

Zero Trust Strategy Priorities Chart

What organizations hope implementing zero trust policies will achieve.

Cloud Adoption Challenges Statistics

Apart from cloud security concerns, organizations pointed the following as the biggest unforeseen factors to slowing or stopping cloud adoption, according to the 2022 Cybersecurity Insiders - Fortinet:

  • Lack of visibility (49%)
  • High cost (43%)
  • Lack of control (42%)
  • Lack of staff resources or expertise (39%)
  • Lack of security (22%)

A major obstacle to controlling cloud costs is not getting “true visibility” into costs:

Top Challanges Bar Chart

Credit: Anodot

Other surveys reported a lack of integration with existing systems and insufficient talent and expertise as other challenges:

Barriers Realizing Cloud Value Chart

What Are The Top Cloud Computing Initiatives In 2023?

In response to those challenges, many organizations have or are implementing initiatives to counter them, including cost optimization solutions:

Top Cloud Initiatives Chart

Some companies are leveraging cloud computing to meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Check this out:

ESG Progress Chart

What’s Next?

Ultimately, we’ll continue to see more workloads move to the cloud as the benefits of adopting cloud computing outweigh the challenges for many players.

We get it, though. It can be frustrating not knowing where your cloud spend is going — especially when you don’t know whether you are investing more or simply overspending.

We know this because we’ve helped:

  • Drift reduce its annual cloud cost by $2.4 million.
  • Obsidian reduce its AWS bill by 25%.
  • ResponseTap reduce its overall AWS spend by 18%.
  • SeatGeek save 6-8 hours of investigation time per question about cost.
  • MalwareBytes to achieve granular unit economics, in particular, cost per product, to know exactly where their cloud costs are going.
  • Remitly allocate 50% more costs without tagging.

CloudZero will help you transform your cloud bill from this:

Excel Sheet Snapshot

To this:

transform-cloud-spend

Simple, granular, and actionable cloud cost insights at your fingertips, including cost per customer, team, software feature, product, engineering project, computing environment, and more.

CloudZero’s unique code-driven cost optimization approach helps you achieve all this without endless cost allocation tags.

But don't take our word for it. Schedule a demo today to discover how CloudZero can help you manage and optimize your costs across AWS, GCP, Azure, Snowflake, and Kubernetes, all in one place.

CloudZero Team

Author: CloudZero Team

This blog post was written and reviewed by the CloudZero team. Combined, our team has more than a quarter century of experience in the cloud cost space. Every blog post is extensively researched and reviewed by several members of our team for accuracy and readability.

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