The trend continues to accelerate – even faster now. Cloud computing was already booming before 2020. But in the following two years, remote work flourished, and cloud adoption soared.
Some companies have since returned to the office. Others are adopting hybrid models, where staff work from home and in the office.
Yet there’s more to the rise and rise of cloud computing than remote working.
For example, cloud infrastructure also supports big data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) models, the Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced Business Intelligence (BI). So, we compiled the following remarkable cloud computing statistics from reliable sources to help you keep up-to-date.
We’ve also included tips, tricks, and tools to make cloud computing work for you. Yes, that includes practical tips on how to manage and optimize your cloud costs across AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and Snowflake within a single platform.
Table Of Contents
- Top Picks
- Cloud Adoption Stats: How Many Companies Use Cloud Computing?
- Why Are Companies Adopting Cloud Computing So Fast?
- Cloud Spending Statistics
- World Wide Waste: Cloud Waste Is A Big Problem
- Cloud Cost Optimization Statistics
- Statistics On Cloud Service Providers
- Statistics On Cloud Computing Models: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
- Cloud Computing Strategy Statistics: Public Vs. Private Vs. Hybrid Vs. Multicloud
- How Many Applications Do Companies Have In The Cloud?
- On-Premises Spending Vs. Cloud Spend: What Share Of IT Spending Is Cloud-Based?
- Cloud Monitoring Statistics
- Cloud Computing Stats By Industry: Which Industries Use Cloud Services The Most?
- Data Analytics And Cloud Storage Statistics
- Cloud Security Statistics
- Statistics About Factors That Are Limiting Cloud Adoption
- What Are The Top Cloud Computing Initiatives In 2023?
- What’s Next?
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Credit: Gartner 2022
40% of organizations in developing regions are currently evaluating and planning cloud strategies (Oracle and IDC)
The cloud computing industry is not just booming in developed economies. According to new Oracle findings, cloud computing is rapidly developing in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as well as in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) regions.
As of now, 30% of respondents said they use the cloud. Among companies with more than 2,500 employees, half are planning or evaluating cloud strategies as are 41% of those with 1,000 to 2,500 employees.
Cloud Computing is becoming more popular across lines of business teams (Oracle and IDC)
Lines of business (LoBs) are even more involved (40%) than IT (38%). That’s a good thing. Both units are leveraging the cloud’s power in different areas of their organizations more than they used to.
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:
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.
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.
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:
Credit: IBM’s Beyond Agility – How Cloud is Driving Enterprise Innovation Report
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.
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.
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.
Credit: Oracle
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.
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.
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:
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:
Over 50% of SMEs 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.
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.
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.
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 plans to increase their cloud budgets to support this drive into the future.
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.
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.
Credit: CloudZero’s 2022 State of Cloud Cost Intelligence Report
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.
Credit: 2022 Tech Spend Pulse
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.
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:
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.
Credit: Wasted cloud spend, State of the Cloud Report by Flexera
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.
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 multi cloud environments is challenging.
These challenges make controlling cloud costs even more difficult.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
78% noticed cloud cost variance late (Source: CloudZero)
Only 22% of respondents said they 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.
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:
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.
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.
Credit: PwC Cloud Business Survey
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.
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.
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.
Credit: Cloud services market share in Q2, 2022
Competition between Azure and AWS is rife
Picture this:
- 83% enterprises use Azure vs. 77% for AWS.
- Enterprises are running more VMs on Azure than they are on AWS — 71% run more than 51 VMs on Azure vs 69% of enterprises 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.
Salesforce and Adobe are the most valuable SaaS companies today (Source: Mike Sonders)
Salesforce invented the modern SaaS model about 25 years ago, and provides some of the best SaaS tools for businesses today.
Despite Salesforce earning much more, Adobe recently overtook Salesforce as the largest public SaaS company by valuation, according to Mike Sonders.
Credit: Mike Sonders
Adobe has a market cap of $241 billion, while Salesforce is worth $220 billion in 2023, according to Mike Sonders. Then again, Salesforce made $31.4 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2023, an increase of 18% from the year before.
Adobe made $17.61 billion in fiscal year 2022, an increase of 15% over 2021 results. Discover today’s best SaaS companies in our snackable guide.
Diverse players are great at different offerings (Source: Synergy Research Group)
A deeper look into various cloud computing segments reveals that:
- AWS is the clear leader in the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (SaaS) segment.
- Azure is the provider to beat in the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for enterprises segment.
- While AWS has made headway in the AI research, ML modeling, and IoT areas, Google’s GCP excels at these with its Deep Learning offerings and Tensor Processing Units (TPU) chips.
- Alibaba dominates in IaaS across the Asia Pacific region and is third globally after AWS and Azure.
- CloudFlare and Akamai also show up in the Content Distribution Network (CDN) space.
Consider this:
Snowflake is the most valuable data cloud today (Source: Mike Sonders)
According to the site, Snowflake has a market cap of $57 billion in 2023. It provides data lake and warehousing services and has been a publicly traded company since October 2020. The company generated $2.067 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2023.
In the same space is Databricks, which made over $1 billion in revenue for the year 2022. It’s data warehousing product alone crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in April 2023. Its market cap dropped from $38 billion in 2021 to $31 billion after it trimmed its internal share price in October 2
