Optimizing costs is top priority among corporate cloud users

Cloud management company RightScale has released the results of its sixth annual State of the Cloud Survey, the largest survey of corporate cloud users.

Among the findings are that optimizing cloud costs is the top initiative across all cloud users (53 percent) and especially among mature cloud users (64 percent). Respondents estimate 30 percent of cloud spend is wasted, while RightScale has measured actual waste at between 30 and 45 percent.

Despite an increased focus on cloud cost management, only a minority of companies are taking critical actions to optimize their cloud costs, such as shutting down unused workloads or selecting lower-cost clouds or regions.

Other findings are that 85 percent of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy, up from 82 percent in 2016. However, private cloud adoption has fallen from 77 percent to 72 percent as the focus shifts to public cloud.

Public cloud users are already running applications in an average of 1.8 public clouds while experimenting with 1.8 more. Private cloud users are using 2.3 private clouds today and experimenting with an additional 2.1 private clouds. Respondents run 41 percent of workloads in public cloud and 38 percent in private cloud. Among larger enterprises, respondents run 32 percent of workloads in public cloud and 43 percent in private cloud.

Enterprise central IT has a broader view of its cloud role in 2017 that includes selecting public clouds (65 percent), deciding/advising on which apps should move to cloud (63 percent), and selecting private clouds (63 percent).

DevOps adoption continues to increase, up from 74 to 78 percent with enterprises reaching 84 percent. Thirty percent of enterprises are adopting DevOps company-wide, up from 21 percent in 2016. Overall Docker adoption surged to 35 percent, taking the lead from Chef and Puppet at 28 percent each.

Azure adoption has grown too, from 20 to 34 percent of respondents, while AWS stayed flat at 57 percent of respondents. Google also grew from 10 to 15 percent to maintain third position. In enterprises Azure increased adoption significantly from 26 percent to 43 percent while AWS adoption in this group rose slightly from 56 percent to 59 percent.

"The RightScale 2017 survey showed that enterprise multi-cloud and hybrid cloud adoption continues to grow, and even with that growth, challenges are decreasing," says Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale. "Companies report using eight different clouds on average; optimizing cloud costs is the top cloud initiative; cloud challenges, including security concerns, continue to abate; and Docker continues its phenomenal growth. We also saw AWS adoption remain flat, while number two Azure continued to gain ground on leader AWS."

You can download a copy of the full report from the RightScale website.

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