Cloud leaders embrace mature multi-cloud architectures and strategies

Leaders also implement key strategies that set them apart from their peers, such as:

• Reduced dependence on on-premises solutions. Leaders’ migration to the public cloud is roughly on par with Hopefuls, Moderates, and Drivers, but Leaders’ ability to move workloads not just to cloud, but off-premises in general, is better. For example, Hopefuls have 32% of workloads still on-premises. Leaders have reduced on-premises workloads to just 19%.

• The right balance of service providers in a multi-cloud strategy. Leaders tend to have three to four cloud service providers, whereas the majority of Hopefuls, Moderates, and Drivers have only one or two.

• An expectation of more benefits from multi-cloud. Access to more choice (85%) is the top benefit respondents seek from their multi-cloud investments. However, Leaders understand that attaining value is about more than choice—it’s about strategy execution. Leaders scored higher overall across every multi-cloud benefit category—expecting more individual benefits, and at greater numbers, for each category. For example, Leaders’ top benefit priority areas were distribution and data interoperability (94%) and building full-stack capabilities (95%). Conversely, only 66% of Moderates expected to benefit in these areas. This difference underscores the importance of developing not just horizontal, multi-cloud architectures, but full-stack vertical solutions that allow data to move seamlessly, regardless of cloud provider. Figure 2 outlines benefits of a multi-cloud approach.

Industry sectors prioritize multi-cloud benefits differently

Cloud benefit priorities and benchmarks differ by industry. For example:

• Access to more choice and building full-stack capabilities are prioritized most by life sciences and health care organizations
• Increased flexibility and negotiating leverage are most important to technology, media, and telecommunications respondents
• Improving resilience and reliability is a leading benefit for consumer and financial services organizations, more so than for other industries
• Gaining autonomy and avoiding vendor lock-in are important to the energy, resources, and industrials and life sciences and health care sectors
• Data interoperability is a top area for consumer sector respondents, while it’s less of a priority for financial services organizations, which place more importance on data scalability

This variation in expected benefits by industry could be, in part, because certain sectors are further along in their multi-cloud adoption than others. For example, our analysis found that consumer and financial services (84% for both) are the top two leading industries in terms of taking a multi-cloud approach. Energy, resources, and industrials (72%) and technology, media, and telecommunications (77%) clearly still embrace a multi-cloud approach, but they have lower multi-cloud adoption.

Moving forward

Given varying adoption levels, what companies in particular sectors seek to gain from their multi-cloud investments will differ. Nevertheless, industries that aren’t as mature in their multi-cloud adoption journey can look to leading sectors and cloud Leaders to guide their multi-cloud strategies. They might also consider other strategies—such as leveraging industry clouds and a focus on creating a mature software engineering culture—that are helping Leaders to gain greater value from their cloud investments.

To learn more about other strategies and actions that set Leaders apart, read “Purposeful—not greater—investments set cloud innovation leaders apart” or our full US Future of Cloud Survey Report.

1 Leaders were the top 29% of respondents who achieved the greatest strategy and innovation value from their cloud investments.