Flexera’s 2023 State of the Cloud Report reveals that economic uncertainty has led to a reduction in corporate spending, but the need for innovation and increased revenues is still high, and the cloud is seen as an engine of innovation. IT professionals are under pressure to remain competitive in today’s dynamic and evolving landscape, and the report sheds light on the strategic initiatives they’re utilizing.
Interestingly, respondents indicated a slight shift towards single public cloud usage, with multi-cloud decreasing from 89% last year to 87% this year. Meanwhile, single public cloud usage has increased to 11%, up from 9% last year. This shift is indicative of organizations potentially consolidating on a single cloud.
According to Synergy Research Group, as of the fourth quarter of 2022, Amazon owns a 33% share of the global cloud services market via Amazon Web Services (AWS), followed by Microsoft’s Azure at 23% and Google Cloud at 11%. Flexera’s new report provides insights into cloud adoption and spending trends in 2023 between these three leading public cloud providers, and here are the five most interesting results.
1. 47% use AWS for running significant workloads
After Azure surpassed AWS in adoption rates for the first time last year, a recent survey shows that AWS has regained the lead with 47% of respondents using the provider for significant workloads, compared to 41% using Azure. Meanwhile, Oracle, IBM, and Alibaba Cloud services have remained relatively unchanged.
The survey also revealed that 28% of organizations are either experimenting with or planning to use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or Google Cloud Platform. Despite competition from other cloud providers, AWS and Azure remain the most widely adopted, with Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, IBM Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud trailing behind.
In the case of enterprise cloud adoption, while Azure was leading in last year’s report, this year’s survey shows that both AWS and Azure are tied at 75%.
When considering experimenting with workloads on public cloud providers for enterprise use, 19% of respondents favor Google Cloud Platform followed by Azure (12%) and AWS (10%).
2. 71% of SMBs favor AWS over other public cloud providers
When it comes to public cloud providers, SMBs are still showing a preference for AWS over other options, with 71% using AWS and 51% using Azure. However, the usage of the Google Cloud Platform among SMBs has dropped significantly from 43% last year to 28% this year. IBM Cloud remains a less popular choice, as it’s mainly adopted by larger organizations with existing IT contracts. Moreover, SMB usage of all other cloud providers has also declined considerably, indicating that the trend is towards using either AWS or Azure.
3. Heavy cloud users are more likely to use AWS
The extent of an organization’s utilization of cloud services plays a role in their choice of a public cloud provider. Generally, as organizations become more experienced in using the cloud, they tend to lean towards the dominant players in the market. Similar to the previous year, AWS is favored by organizations with substantial cloud usage and longer experience with cloud computing.
4. Users are more likely to spend more on AWS services
In terms of expenditure, AWS holds the top spot (or shares it) across multiple spending levels among the survey participants, except for those spending between $1 million to $2 million per month. When it comes to high spenders, 14% of AWS users shell out over $12 million annually, while the corresponding figures for Azure and Google Cloud Platform are 12% and 7%, respectively. IBM and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure lag in fourth and fifth place, respectively.
Among enterprise users of AWS and Azure, 15% of both groups spend more than $12 million per year.
5. AWS and Azure lead in the number of instances operating in the cloud
The number of virtual machines, or instances, operating within a cloud can offer valuable information about the scale of an organization’s presence in that cloud. Among cloud providers, AWS and Microsoft Azure have a prominent position in the category of organizations with large-footprint sizes, which encompasses instances numbering 500 or more. In terms of large-footprint deployments, Microsoft Azure Stack outstrips both AWS Outposts and Google Anthos.
To know more about the state of cloud in 2023, read the complete report here.
Source: Flexera
