A new report titled RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud sheds light on a number of different trends in the enterprise cloud space, including how 81% of responding enterprises are utilizing a multi-cloud strategy for their businesses. Also covered in the report is information showing that Microsoft Azure is gaining ground on the current market leader, AWS.
The report covers a January 2018 survey of 997 technical professionals working for organizations in various industries. 525 of these respondents work with enterprise-level organizations with 1,000+ employees while the other 472 are employed with small businesses.
Cloud Usage Up, Except in the Hybrid Cloud
The report details a growing trend of enterprises using the cloud in their business. Across the board, cloud adoption is up in almost every area except one: companies utilizing hybrid cloud approaches.
The survey found that while 81% of enterprises are participating in a multi-cloud strategy, only 51% of these businesses are deploying a hybrid cloud solution which combines the public and private cloud. This is a 7% decrease from 2017’s total of 58%.
In the report, RightScale found that 96% of respondents are currently utilizing the cloud in their business. 92% are taking advantage of a public cloud provider, which is an increase from 2017’s total of 89%.
75% of respondents report using private cloud resources in their business. This number up 3% increase from the year before.
Multi-Cloud Strategies Abound
The report found that on average, organizations are either actively running or experimenting with 4.8 clouds. That means a single company could be utilizing services from multiple cloud vendors.
In a recent interview with Liftr News, ClearBlade CEO Eric Simone touched on how some of ClearBlade’s customers are deploying a multi-cloud strategy in their business, “We have one customer, Stanley Black & Decker, where one division will be running in Amazon, another in Google, and another in IBM.”
Multi-cloud strategies also give enterprises the ability to create fail-safes in case one cloud provider experiences issues, allowing them to pivot between clouds for their business needs.
Azure Gains Ground on AWS
Another topic covered by RightScale’s report is which public cloud vendors enterprises are using in their day-to-day operations.
The survey revealed that AWS, the current leader in the public cloud market, is being utilized by 64% of respondents. That’s a 7% increase from the prior year.
Microsoft’s Azure cloud service gained a lot of ground in the past year. Overall, it grew from 34% adoption to 45%. That’s an 11% increase.
Among enterprise customers, Azure increased adoption from 43% to 58% in the same time period. AWS remains the enterprise leader with 68% cloud adoption.
Oracle Cloud doubled its adoption percentage from 3% to 6% since 2017’s report. Its enterprise-level adoption increased from 5% to 10%.
Google Cloud also grew from 15% to 18%, holding its third position.
The report outlines a growing cloud market, with almost complete saturation among enterprises and a growing footprint in the small business sector. A weakened hybrid cloud market stands out as the lone loss in the report. Microsoft Azure is proving itself as a tough competitor against the reigning leader, AWS.
