New Flexera State of the Cloud Report: AWS vs Azure, Cost Problems, More
Here are several takeaways from the findings to help you keep building your cloud business.
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Microsoft Azure’s heft against behemoth Amazon Web Services dropped a bit since Flexera’s 2022 State of the Cloud Report. Respondents said they run 41% of “significant” cloud workloads in Azure, and 47% in AWS. In 2022, that figure was equally ranked with both providers at 47%.
Meanwhile, Google Cloud Platform again came in third (with 17% of organizations’ “significant”) workloads, followed by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and “other.”
Next, find out which cloud configuration is the most popular among end users.
Photo courtesy Stefan Holm/Shutterstock
It’s probably no surprise that organizations rely most on more than one public cloud, as well as a mix of public and private clouds. How that all breaks down is where things get more interesting.
Here’s what Flexera uncovered:
• 87% of respondents use multiple clouds
• 11% use one public cloud
• 2% use a single private cloud
Among the 87% of multicloud users, here are the details:
• 72% use hybrid cloud
• 13% use multiple public clouds
• 2% use multiple private clouds
Within those hybrid cloud strategies, the majority of respondents (37%) cited a combination of multiple public and private clouds. Coming in at 19% was multiple public clouds paired with one private. Of interest is that Flexera found hybrid cloud usage decreased to 72% year-over-year (down from 80%) as users opted for more public cloud-only consumption.
Up next, find out the top cloud challenges organizations are facing.
Cloud, of course, comes with a range of challenges. Flexera detailed nine of those areas; here, we highlight the top three and provide brief commentary on how partners can assist.
1. Managing cloud spend. A majority (82%) of respondents called this their primary challenge. It’s one that has garnered more attention in the wake of COVID-19 overprovisioning and amid seemingly endless economic problems including inflation and supply chain shortages. Many MSPs, system integrators, consultants and other partners have the skills and capacity to handle FinOps requirements for these customers. Of interest, however, is that 72% of respondents said they have a dedicated FinOps team. The disparity between cloud spend management and the presence of a FinOps team may indicate room for partners to deliver some extra guidance.
2. Security. Coming in at an unsurprising second place (79%), cloud security. Cloud providers themselves are doing better at shoring their platforms and protecting data in specific regions, but still, human error gets in the way — and so do hackers. Channel partners with security operations centers and granular cloud expertise are ideally positioned to oversee security for their customers, especially in light of the third top challenge.
3. Lack of resources/expertise. A little more than three-quarters (78%) of respondents to Flexera’s 2023 State of the Cloud survey said one of their biggest cloud challenges lies in not having enough (or the right) resources and expertise. We smell channel opportunity. As organizations tighten their financial belts, they’re either letting go of skilled IT staff or refocusing them or finding that they need to call on a channel partner.
Speaking of the economy, the next slide discusses how all the uncertainty is impacting organizations’ cloud strategies.
Here’s a perhaps-pleasant finding: Almost half (45%) of respondents told Flexera that even with all the economic uncertainty, their cloud usage and spend will remain about the same as planned. From there, 36% said cloud usage and spend will climb somewhat higher than budgeted, while 9% said consumption and costs will rise significantly higher. Another 9% said the economy is actually changing their usage and spend less than planned.
The biggest takeaway here ties back to channel partners pitching in on the FinOps side and guiding customers’ optimization and expense management. In fact, that serves as an excellent segue to the next slide.
When it comes to cloud initiatives over the next year, 62% of Flexera respondents said optimizing existing cloud environments, and managing associated spend, stands out as the No. 1 priority. Almost three-quarters (71%) of “heavy” cloud users said they’ll make this their absolute top priority.
From there, 55% of overall respondents want to make progress on their cloud-first strategies, and 44% intend to migrate more workloads to the cloud.
Of particular interest to the channel is that 14% of respondents say they’ll expand their reliance on cloud MSPs. We look at that in more detail on the next slide.
Right now, 60% of enterprise Flexera respondents lean on MSPs for public cloud management. That figure drops to 26% among SMB respondents.
Meantime, 11% of enterprises plan to start using an MSP and an almost equal amount (12%) of SMBs intends to do the same. Those intentions likely have to do with the economy and lack of internal expertise. Again, we smell channel opportunity. To that point, there are a couple more aspects we’ll highlight …
Organizations’ cloud challenges are many and complicated.
Flexera respondents cite growing spend coupled with lots of waste as two main areas, as well as missing out on provider discounts. They also aren’t using resource tagging to enough of an advantage, despite how important that is for cost and department allocations. Finally, organizations are struggling to make the most of their containers, even as the use of those databases keeps rising.
All of these issues indicate the endless domains where cloud-centric channel partners can (and should) provide expertise. And keep building that recurring revenue stream.
Organizations’ cloud challenges are many and complicated.
Flexera respondents cite growing spend coupled with lots of waste as two main areas, as well as missing out on provider discounts. They also aren’t using resource tagging to enough of an advantage, despite how important that is for cost and department allocations. Finally, organizations are struggling to make the most of their containers, even as the use of those databases keeps rising.
All of these issues indicate the endless domains where cloud-centric channel partners can (and should) provide expertise. And keep building that recurring revenue stream.
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure remain in a neck-and-neck battle for cloud supremacy. That’s according to the findings in the latest Flexera State of the Cloud Report, released on Wednesday.
Flexera, which sells platforms for managing IT resources, started publishing its annual cloud report 12 years ago. Last year, the Flexera State of the Cloud Report showed that Azure had actually passed AWS. We aren’t going to spoil the 2023 results for you, but you’ll want to check out the very first slide in the slideshow above to see where the two cloud giants now stand.
The other critical topics that are top of mind for end users (and therefore should be for partners, too) are cloud spending, security and the economy. Some of the stats, though, may surprise you.
Flexera surveyed 750 IT professionals and executives around the world in late 2022; from this, they reached the conclusions discussed in the 2023 State of the Cloud Report. The company says its participants come from a rigorously maintained and vetted independent panel of respondents.
In the slideshow above, Channel Futures chose not to cover every single part of the Flexera 2023 State of the Cloud Report, because of the size and breadth. Instead, we’ve chunked down some of the more impactful takeaways we think will help cloud-centric partners better understand end users — as well as the open channel opportunities at hand.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Kelly Teal or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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