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Cloud and AI Have Enterprises Ramping Up IT BudgetsCloud and AI Have Enterprises Ramping Up IT Budgets
A new report from cloud MSP Wanclouds points to a strong year for channel partners specializing in cloud and AI platforms and solutions.
3 Min Read
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Cloud and AI apparently have become synonymous — so much so that a majority (89%) of organizations are ramping up their cloud computing budgets in 2025, citing AI workloads as the key reason.
That’s according to a new report from cloud managed service provider Wanclouds.
The company, which primarily teams with Amazon Web Services and IBM Cloud, recently surveyed 500 IT decision makers in the United States for its 2025 Cloud and AI Index. The questions yielded what look like significant results affecting MSPs, system integrators, value-added resellers and other cloud-focused channel partners — namely, that enterprises are reshaping their cloud strategies and spending because of AI.
Here are some of the key findings from Wanclouds’ latest Cloud and AI Index:
Eighty-nine percent of organizations plan to increase cloud budgets in 2025, largely due to AI workloads.
Eighty-four percent are implementing hybrid or multicloud strategies, while allocating an increasing number of AI workloads to private cloud environments.
Sixty-one percent already use AI to optimize cloud infrastructure, with AI assistants emerging as the most desired cloud management tool.
That last point may particularly interest partners. That’s because, per Wanclouds, AI isn’t just fueling cloud demand, it’s also demonstrating its prowess as a cloud management resource. Indeed, respondents identified AI-powered virtual assistants as one of their top priorities, with 24% saying they enable faster decision-making and 22% saying they reduce manual effort. As the number and spread of cloud deployments grows within organizations, AI is proving vital in helping to manage complex IT environments, Wanclouds said.
"The convergence of cloud computing and AI is fundamentally reshaping enterprise technology strategies," said Faiz Khan, CEO of Wanclouds. "Our research shows that organizations are not only investing heavily in cloud resources to support their AI initiatives but are also leveraging AI to optimize their cloud infrastructure.”
Wanclouds' Faiz Khan
Soaring Cloud and AI Requirements Mean More Budget
Of the 89% of respondents planning to boost their cloud budgets in 2025, 81% told Wanclouds they’re doing so to house more AI workloads in the cloud while simultaneously accessing high-performance GPUs. Despite the high financial impact of AI, executives “clearly believe that … the cloud needs to be a critical part of AI strategies, even if it is more of a hybrid approach where AI applications are being trained and deployed both on-premise and in the cloud,” Wanclouds said in its 2025 Cloud and AI Index.
To be sure, pairing public cloud and AI can incur “significant costs,” Wanclouds said. Thus, more organizations are looking into private, hybrid and multicloud environments to save some money, the company noted.
Right now, 84% of the organizations Wanclouds surveyed use hybrid and multiclouds. Respondents said this allows them to distribute AI workloads to optimize performance and expenses, while meeting regulatory and security needs. But private clouds are gaining traction as AI workload hosts, per the 2025 Cloud and AI Index. More than half (52%) of people surveyed told Wanclouds they’re running AI on private clouds because they can customize the technology and better control sensitive data.
Other key findings from the 2025 Cloud and AI Index include:
More than half (53%) of respondents say they view AI as a very important cornerstone of their overall cloud transformation strategies, with 18% considering it critical.
More than half (52%) of organizations plan to host most of their AI workloads in private clouds, while 25% intend to remain in public cloud environments.
Almost three-quarters (67%) expect AI to deliver measurable business value within the first year of its implementation within their cloud infrastructure, with 32% seeing the six- to 12-month mark as more realistic, 26% predicting positive outcomes within three to six months, and 9% forecasting benefits within three months or less.
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