Cloud technology saw an amazing growth in the year that just passed.
2018 was a big year for Cloud because of the four major cloud service providers- Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Each of these four providers were at their best in grabbing business throughout the year, either individually across firms or together as multi-cloud platforms.
While some firms adopted them individually depending on budgetary plans, leading firms did not think back in choosing combinations of them for gaining a competitive edge.
As a result, the cloud computing market today has a good number of cloud providers with expertise in enterprise software stack and also companies combining multiple market-leading public cloud players for better productivity.
Let’s take a look at top cloud providers and their performance in 2018
Each of the aforementioned cloud providers had a tough competition throughout the year, making a major difference in the cloud technology market.
According to the 2018 State of the Cloud Survey report, Azure is displaying a faster growth rate than the market-leading AWS, majorly among enterprises.
As per the report findings, the overall Azure adoption increased from 34 to 45 percent, while it was 57 to 64 percent for AWS, and GCP stands third with 15 to 18 percent rise in 2018.
Oracle Cloud also performed better but with lesser, doubled penetration rate from 3 to 6 percent. Azure did its best among enterprises, showing a rise in adoption from 43 to 58 percent, while AWS adoption among enterprises increased from 59 to 68 percent.
Other cloud providers that reported rise in adoption among enterprises in 2018 include Oracle (5 to 10 percent), IBM Cloud (10 to 15 percent) and GCP (15 to 19 percent). Azure led the race for adoption among enterprise cloud beginners with a slight improvement of 49 percent over AWS that saw 47 percent adoption rate among beginners.
Key findings of the 2018 State of the Cloud Survey report include:
1) Rise in Overall Cloud Adoption
- More than 96 percent of surveyed reported cloud usage
- Public Cloud led the race with rise in adoption from 89 percent in 2017 to 92 percent by 2018
- Private Cloud also saw a rise in adoption from 72 percent in 2017 to 75 percent by 2018
- Rise in cloud-dependent workloads; Respondents report 40 percent in public cloud and 39 percent in private cloud
- Among enterprises, 45 percent of workloads are run in private cloud and 39 percent in public cloud
- 57 percent of enterprises have a central cloud team and 24 percent planning to have a Center of Excellence; 31 percent among SMBs report the presence of central cloud team
- Rise in focus of central IT teams on moving apps to the cloud (63 percent in 2017 to 69 percent in 2018)
2) Multi-cloud, Top of the Survey
- More than 80 percent of the survey respondents reported multi-cloud adoption
- Adoption rate of hybrid cloud fell from 58 percent in 2017 to 51 percent by 2018
3) Public Cloud on Demand Among Enterprises
- Public Cloud is on top priority for enterprises, with positive rise in trend from 29 percent in 2017 to 38 percent by 2018
- Hybrid Cloud took a hit declining from 50 percent in 2017 to 45 percent in 2018
4) Enterprise Cloud Spending on Rise
- 26 percent of enterprises spent more than USD 6 million annually on public cloud
- 52 percent accounted for more than USD 1.2 million annual spending
- 20 percent of enterprises plan more-than-double public cloud spending and 71 percent of firms are keen on spending beyond 20 percent
- 17 percent of SMBs reported plans to double their cloud spending, with 62 percent of them indicating minimum 20 percent growth
5) Spend and Security Remain Challenges
- 77 percent respondents report security as a challenge in cloud and 29 percent consider it as a more serious concern
- 76 percent report difficulty in managing public cloud spending, while 21 see it as a serious issue
- Even beginners consider security as a serious challenge in cloud, with intermediate and advanced users reporting more issues
- Enterprises are more concerned about security aspect of cloud than SMBs
- Optimizing cloud spending on top initiative for cloud users, increasing in rate from 53 percent in 2017 to 58 percent in 2018.
- Other key agendas include moving more workloads to cloud (51 percent), better financial reporting (44 percent) and automated policies for governance (42 percent)
A Snapshot of cloud Initiatives (2017 Vs. 2018):
“Optimizing costs is especially important for mature cloud users with 65 percent of intermediate users and 69 percent of advanced users citing it as a key initiative for 2018,” says the report.
Containers indicate a growing trend with many users also choosing container-as-a-service offerings from the public cloud providers. The rate of containers usage is going to be more among enterprises compared to SMBs who are preferably looking for Kubernetes.
“Enterprises are showing strong interest in Azure Container Service, with 41 percent planning to use it on top of the 25 percent using it today. SMBs are showing the most future interest in Kubernetes, with 33 percent planning to use it on top of the 22 percent using it today,” says the report.
In 2018, AWS led the public cloud adoption market while also giving scope for other public cloud providers.
Expectations are also high on Google Cloud adoption going by 2018 figures, which saw higher percentage of respondents experimenting or planning to use Google (38 percent), followed by Azure (31 percent) and VMware Cloud on AWS (28 percent), indicating a potential future for Google Cloud to pump its adoption rate in the coming years.
Let’s see who sets the cloud trend in 2019!
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