30 Cloud Computing Statistics, Facts & Trends for 2024

Since the early days of digital transformation, IT markets have encountered numerous disruptions. But no other disruptive force was as continuous and fierce as cloud computing.

As cloud computing stats highlight, cloud computing applies to every industry. From media and entertainment, ecommerce, software, and finance to manufacturing, consulting, and telecommunications — all need cloud computing.

The benefits are clear: cloud technology offers flexibility, affordability, scalability, and reliability. But unlike before, businesses are not spending on cloud technology to derive financial benefits but to launch new solutions and bring new functionality to the market.

Not only this, a lot has changed with cloud computing — new models, investments, new strategies, and organizations’ behavior toward the technology — compared to last year, except for the fact that cloud adoption is increasing rapidly.

Read on to find the ultimate list of cloud computing statistics for 2022.

Cloud Computing Statistics: Global Cloud Computing Market

1. Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is expected to be US$ 494.7 billion in 2022, up from US$ 410.9 billion in 2021.

(Gartner, Fortune Business Insights)

Gartner forecasts the cloud computing market will grow by 20.4% in 2022. The end-user cloud computing market size will reach US$ 600 billion in 2023.

According to Gartner’s cloud computing growth statistics:

• The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will see the largest growth in 2022 at 30.6%, amounting to US$ 119 billion (up from US$ 91 billion in 2021).
• Desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will see a growth of 26.6% and 26.1% respectively.

The cloud market growth is referable to shifted hybrid work preference, given organizations are moving from in-office tools to DaaS.

Fortune Business Insights also gives a similar estimate and forecasts that the global cloud computing market will be around US$ 480.4 billion in 2022.

Plus, it predicts that the global cloud computing market will grow to US$ 1.7 trillion by 2029, exhibiting a CAGR of 19.9% between 2022 to 2029.

Alone, China’s cloud services market was estimated to be around US$ 32 billion in 2021. And its cloud computing industry is forecast to be around US$ 90 billion by 2025.

Earlier estimates from Fortune Business Insights anticipated a CAGR of 13.3%. Given the unprecedented demand for cloud computing services during and since the pandemic, Fortune Business Insight revised the annual growth rate of the public cloud market to 19.9%.

2. The Global cloud computing market was valued at US$ 70.19 billion in 2021 and is expected to be US$ 376 billion by 2029.

(Fortune Business Insights)

The growth of the global cloud services market is attributable to several factors, like increasing demand for advanced technologies IoT, AI, analytics, and automation.

Plus, the growing volume of unstructured data is another reason organizations are moving away from enterprise storage solutions and adapting cloud data centers for file storage.

Equally important to note, the global remote desktop software market is expected to be around US$ 2.27 billion in 2022.

And FBI’s cloud computing statistics indicate that the remote desktop software market will grow at a CAGR of 18% — reaching US$ 7.22 billion by 2029.

Enterprise Cloud Adoption Statistics

3. All organizations use at least one cloud infrastructure, up from 99% in 2021.

(Flexera)

Compared to 2021, almost all organizations surveyed by Flexera are using at least one cloud platform.

Some 96% of organizations use at least one public cloud platform. 16% of organizations are reliant only on public cloud services.

At the same time, some 84% of organizations use one or more private cloud technologies, with 4% saying they use only a private cloud.

Here’s the type of cloud systems used by industries in 2021:

4. 1 in 5 organizations is running more than 75% of their workloads in the cloud.

(Fortinet)

Some 35% of organizations with cloud adoption are running about 25% of their business workloads in the cloud. Another quarter of organizations is running 25-50% of their workloads in the cloud.

In fact, less than 4 in 10 organizations are currently running more than 50% of their workload in the cloud.

Nevertheless, Fortinet’s cloud computing growth statistics highlight that some 31% of organizations predict they will run more than 75% of their workloads in the cloud by the end of 2023.

Some 27% of organizations plan to run more than 50% of their business workloads in the cloud by 2023.

5. An average organization uses 1935 cloud services, an increase of 15% compared to 2018.

(McAfee)

Cloud-based file-sharing services and tools account for more than 20% of all cloud solutions in use.

Equally important to note, file sharing services have been the top cloud category in usage for over six years in a row.

The second most adopted category is finance-related services like cloud accounting tools, accounting for 7.5% of all cloud computing platforms in use per organization.

The following most used cloud categories are IT services (7.1%), cloud infrastructure (7.1%), development (6.5%), and security tools (3.8%).

Business Intelligence tools are another dominant category, representing over 5.3% of all cloud technologies in use per organization.

Cloud-based CRM services (2%), project management tools (2.4%), ecommerce platforms (2.3%), logistics (1.7%), networking (1.4%), and social media-related cloud tools (1.7%) account for over 10% of all cloud services in use per organization.

6. Retail (96.9%), media & entertainment (94.9%), and finance & banking (92.8%) are the top industry sectors with the highest cloud use.

(O’Reilly)

Only 3.1% of retail businesses say cloud technologies are not applicable to their business.

And the reason for such high cloud adoption among retail and ecommerce is apparent; the ecommerce sites see high traffic during sales and the holiday season. The same is the case in other industries like media and entertainment. For context, Netflix sees high traffic when a movie releases on the platform.

Be that as it may, software industries have a 92.5% cloud adoption rate. Still, some 7.5% of organizations say cloud computing technology is not applicable to them.

O’Reilly’s cloud adoption statistics highlight that electronics and hardware have the least cloud adoption rate, with over a quarter of them saying it is not applicable.

Government agencies’ cloud adoption rate is also low compared to other industries; some 84% of government agencies use cloud computing technology.

O'Reilly's cloud provider statistics highlight that Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud are leading cloud storage providers among all organizations.

In fact, Amazon Web Services dominates all industries, except for consulting and professional services, where Azure has a market share of 60% vs. AWS’s 58%.

Many cloud service providers offer similar sets of technologies and excel in cloud tech proficiency. But AWS — given its head start in the cloud industry, range of features, and massive scale — suits just about any industry.

7. 67% of organizations use public cloud vs. 45% private cloud (on-premise or hosted) with cloud APIs.

(O’Reilly, Flexera)

Last year, the public cloud adoption rate was about 61%, and the private cloud adoption rate was about 35%.

However, contrary to Flexera’s 2022 report, O’Reilly’s 2022 cloud computing stats report only 29% and 23% of organizations are using hybrid cloud strategies and multi-cloud models.

Interestingly, retail and ecommerce industries (79%), media & entertainment(73%), and software (72%) all favor public cloud vendors.

The use of private cloud infrastructure was low in all industries compared to public cloud except telecommunications, where private cloud is used by some 64% of organizations vs. only 60% using services of public cloud vendors.

How Companies Are Using Cloud Resources?

8. 89% of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy, down from 92% in 2021.

(Flexera)

Flexera’s cloud computing statistics report that the adoption of single public cloud services has risen to 9% from 8% in 2021.

Multi-cloud is the de facto standard among organizations. And for good reasons — according to organizations — a multi-cloud strategy helps them integrate multiple services and is scalable.

Still, the cloud adoption trends differ from organization to organization. Their approach to multi-cloud differs depending on the needs and providers chosen.

For context,

• 80% of organizations with a multi-cloud strategy use hybrid cloud platforms.
• 7% of them are using multiple public cloud services.
• 2% of the organizations have a multiple-private strategy in place.

Additionally, of the 80% of organizations taking a hybrid cloud strategy, 79% say they plan to use multiple cloud platforms. Some 60% say they will use more than one private cloud platform.

Still, most organizations plan to use a mix of private and public cloud services.

Back in 2021, the organizations with a multi-cloud strategy, on average, used 2.6 public and 2.7 private cloud platforms.

9. App siloed on multiple clouds is the most common multi-cloud implementation, with at least 45% of organizations saying they use it.

(Flexera)

App siloed on multiple clouds has remained the most popular multi-cloud architecture for the last three years. Even in 2021, some 49% of organizations siloed workloads on multiple clouds.

DR/Failure between clouds saw a 10% YoY increase this year and is now at 44%. Last year, only 38% of organizations used DR/Failure architecture.

Additionally, 41% of organizations are integrating data between clouds, down from 45% in 2021.

But some organizations are also using more advanced multi-cloud architecture like workload mobility between clouds (38%) and individual spans that span private and public networks (31%).

10. 32% of organizations use multi-cloud security tools to ensure strong governance and security.

(Flexera)

For the first time in 2022, multi-cloud security tools have taken the first spot (in regards to a number of organizations using them) among the different types of multi-cloud management tools.

Some 32% of organizations now use multi-cloud security tools. In 2021, some 38% of organizations were using multi-cloud security tools (and it took the second spot among tooling used by organizations to manage the multi-cloud).

Here’s a breakdown of management tools used by organizations to manage the multi-cloud:

Last year,

• 42% of organizations were using multi-cloud cost management tools. (1st spot in 2021).
• 33% of organizations were using multi-cloud management tools and multi-cloud governance tools. (3rd and 4th spot in 2021).

11. 47% of organizations now say they consider the cloud as the 1st option when incorporating new technology or initiatives.

(O’Reilly)

As already indicated above, more than 3 in 10 organizations are planning to run 75% of their workloads in the cloud.

The rest of them are migrating aggressively too. Some 47% of organizations now consider the cloud as the first choice for any new technology or business initiative.

Additionally, 9% of organizations say they now consider “SaaS first” or “buy before build” when it comes to incorporating bundle solutions like ERP technologies in manufacturing industries or sales CRM tools at marketing firms.

Another 18% of organizations say they prefer more integrated platforms — generally from the same vendor — when incorporating new technologies or initiatives.

Some 10% of organizations say they now consider multiple public cloud storage services for new business outcomes.

In fact, only 5% of organizations are considering cloud repartition and are moving back to on-premise enterprise infrastructure for future workloads.

12. Optimizing cloud performance (59%), migrating more workloads to the cloud (57%), and moving from on-premise to SaaS (42%) are the top three cloud initiatives across all organizations in 2022.

(Flexera)

Be it any cloud computing statistics, O’Reilly or Flexera all indicate that organizations are looking for ways to reduce their cloud spending by optimizing existing processes.

Equally important to note, reducing cloud computing spending remains the topmost priority regardless of the cloud usage report.

Be it organizations with light cloud usage (57%), moderate cloud usage (63%), or heavy cloud usage (58%) — all are looking for cloud cost optimization as well as optimizing the current cloud processes and reducing their cloud infrastructure spending.

Other top cloud initiatives among organizations in 2022 are:

13. Cost efficiency and savings (74%), agility (68%), and value delivered (47%) are the top metrics for assessing progress against cloud among organizations.

(Flexera)

Automation tools enable organizations to monitor and optimize cloud spending continuously.

Cost savings and the ability to deliver products and services quickly has been the top metric for measuring cloud progress for three years.

However, 48% of organizations (up from 45% in 2021) now tie in with cost avoidance which is now the third-most important metric to assess cloud computing progress.

Plus, 47% of organizations (down from 50% in 2021) measure cloud progress by assessing an increase in competitive advantage. Some 45% assess cloud progress based on the number of workloads transferred to the cloud.

14. 74% of enterprises have a central cloud team or CCOE vs. 64% of SMBs.

(Flexera)

At least 40% of enterprises and 24% of small and medium businesses have a CCOE (cloud center of excellence). 34% of enterprises and 40% of small and medium businesses have a central cloud team as of 2022.

Another 17% of businesses (all sizes) plan to establish a CCOE or central cloud team within the next 12 months or beyond.

Needless to say, the cloud infrastructure spending, need for security, and governance is more in large enterprises than in small and medium businesses. Only 8% of enterprises say they have no plans for CCOE or central cloud team vs. 24% of SMBs.

When asked about the CCOE or central cloud team responsibilities:

• 61% of organizations say CCOE or central cloud team advises or decides the appropriate apps for the cloud.
• 58% say the team helps them with cloud migration.
• 57% of organizations use CCOE or central cloud for managing cloud spending and public cloud services spending.
• In some 55% of organizations, the team makes the cloud policies.

29% of organizations also use cloud teams or CCOEs to manage cloud deployments and private cloud deployments.

All told, understand that organizations also use accounting or finance teams, IT, and other business units for managing cloud spending.

Moreover, nearly 70% of organizations maximize resource models for cost analysis.

Cloud Computing Statistics: The Benefits of Cloud Services As Realized By Organizations

15. 87% of organizations experienced business acceleration from their use of the cloud.

(McAfee)

As much as 41% of organizations also attribute their business growth to cloud computing resources.

There are numerous benefits realized by organizations using any cloud service model — SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS. But the organizations using IaaS have an edge on business acceleration because of the IaaS model.

For context, McAfee cloud computing statistics highlights these benefits realized by IaaS users:

• 64% of IaaS users report higher-performance IT infrastructure vs. 59% overall.
• 61% of organizations using the IaaS model say their IT cost is reduced vs. 57% overall.
• 54% of the organizations using the IaaS model report improved organizational security vs. 52% overall.
• 51% of IaaS users report improved collaboration vs. 44% overall.
• 47% of IaaS users say their employee productivity has increased vs. 43% overall.
• 43% report faster time to market vs. 37% overall cloud users.
• 36% of IaaS users say their employee satisfaction level has improved vs. 33% overall.

Some 37% of organizations with an IaaS model have reported improved ability to launch new products vs. 30% of overall cloud users.

Here are the benefits realized by organizations using any cloud technology that, collectively, resulted in business acceleration:

16. More businesses favor “no vendor lock-in” than “truly abstracted infrastructure” for the first time (56% vs. 44%).

(IBM)

For the first time, organizations are valuing — especially the leaders — business leverage over the benefit of one cloud service.

Additionally, leading organizations are more focused on developing new processes than laggards (31% vs. 25%). In 2020, the share of organizations focused on launching new processes was less overall (24% of leaders and 19% of laggards).

This clearly indicates that leaders have already improved internal processes and cloud skills in their organization. (Back in 2018, almost all organizations prioritized self-education and developing new skills).

Sure, 23% of leading organizations will still focus on self-education over anything else this year vs. 25% in 2020.

However, the share of self-described laggards determined to self-educate is more compared to 2020. Some 31% of lagging organizations say their first priority for this year will be self-education and earning new certifications, vs. 29% in 2020.

Beyond that, a high number of laggards plan to improve existing processes compared to leading organizations (44% vs. 26%).

Most Popular Cloud Provider Statistics

17. Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are the leading cloud storage providers, with over 73% of organizations using them.

(Fortinet)

Earlier Fortinet’s cloud computing survey indicated that Azure was the leading cloud storage provider, with at least 73% of organizations using the platform.

The recent survey indicates that Amazon Web Services has gained a three-point YoY, with over 73% of organizations using the platform as of 2022.

This is followed by Google Cloud Platform (38%), Oracle Cloud (21%), and IBM Cloud (15%).

Rackspace and Alibaba Cloud are used by 8% and 7% of organizations, respectively.

18. Amazon Web Services leads the global cloud storage market, with over 33% market share.

(Statista)

According to Statista’s cloud computing stats, the global cloud market generated a revenue of US$ 178 billion in 2021, 37% more than in 2020. This count includes PaaS (platform-as-a-service), IaaS, and hosted private cloud technologies.

AWS accounted for 33% of cloud infrastructure service providers as of the 4th quarter of 2021.

19. Google Drive is by far the most used cloud storage service in the world, with over 94% of people using it.

(GoodFirms)

When it comes to personal cloud storage, 54% of users use up to three different services.

GoodFirms’s cloud computing statistics report that Dropbox (66%), OneDrive (39%), iCloud (38%), and Amazon Drive (9%) are other leading personal cloud storage providers.

Equally important to note is that most people access their personal cloud via mobile apps (89%), followed by websites (87%) and desktop apps (10%).

Additionally, as much as 92% of internet users say cloud technologies have significantly influenced their data habits.

• Some 38% of users say they frequently select and save data.
• 34% say they have opted to sync the data automatically.

Moreover, more than 6 in 10 internet users consider the cloud as their primary storage.

20. 70% of all cloud services in use are enterprise services vs. 30% of consumer services.

(McAfee)

These cloud computing services account for over 71% of all uploaded data in the cloud.

OneDrive, Exchange Online, Salesforce, SharePoint Online, and Service Now are the top six services utilized by organizations.

McAfee cloud computing stats also highlight that these top six services stand out from the security point of view, meaning they have enterprise-level security.

Equally important to note is that all the top six cloud software belongs to collaboration and business apps.

Altogether, collaboration and business applications like OneDrive, Box, and Office 365 account for 65% of all sensitive data, which are categorized as low-risk from the security point of view.

• 25% of the sensitive data is stored in IaaS like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, which are more prone to security and data loss risks. (Much on this later).
• 10% of the corporate data lives in Shadow IT.

At the same time, Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the top five services among consumers.

Cloud Security Statistics

21. 95% of organizations are moderate to extremely concerned about their security in the public cloud environment.

(Fortinet)

In fact, only 1% of organizations say they are not at all concerned about cloud security.

When asked about the significant threats that concern them the most,

• 62% of organizations fear misconfigurations of the cloud platform.
• 52% of companies are concerned about insecure interfaces/APIs.
• 51% fear the exfiltration of sensitive data.

At least half of the organizations are concerned about unauthorized access through misuse of employee credentials.

Other than these, hijacking of accounts (44%), external sharing of data (39%), and foreign-sponsored attacks (37%) are other primary cloud security concerns among organizations.

22. Only 19% of organizations have a comprehensive DevSecOps program in place.

(Fortinet)

DevSecOps (development, security, and operations) are security initiatives at every stage of the application development process, unlike before, when security practices were introduced in the late development cycle.

Put simply, DevSecOps programs address some of the most pressing security challenges at DevOps speed.

Still, only 19% of organizations have a comprehensive DevSecOps program in place.

Another 40% say they have DevSecOps in some parts of the organizations. And some 25% of organizations say they are considering the DevSecOps program soon.

Be that as it may, at least 20% of organizations say they are not interested in DevSecOps or not familiar with DevSecOps programs.

23. 21% of all files (up from 17% in 2018) in the cloud contain sensitive data.

(McAfee)

At least 83% of all global companies say they store sensitive data in the cloud.

And while this indicates that even businesses trust cloud providers enough to store sensitive data, the need for stringent security is now more than ever. McAfee reports that businesses should specifically focus on mitigating the risk of potential attacks.

McAfee’s cloud computing stats indicate that 22% of cloud users regularly share files in the cloud.

Not only this, 48% of all the files stored on the cloud get shared eventually. And at least 8% of the shared data contains sensitive information. Equally important to note, the amount of sensitive files shared in the cloud has increased by 53% year-on-year.

Given that 14% of the shared data are personal email addresses, businesses should educate their employees not to share the data with a personal email address. This is to ensure that data stored in the cloud never leaves the sight of the security team.

Among other types of data shared in the cloud, some 12% are not protected — anyone with the link can access it.

Small business statistics highlight that 40% of reported security breaches happen because of employee negligence.

It is imperative to understand that preventing unauthorized access to sensitive and confidential data requires a concerted effort from every employee.

And this could only be prevented if organizations educate the employees and establish strict authentication protocols to access the data stored in the cloud.

24. Enterprises using the IaaS/PaaS cloud model have 14 misconfigured incidents at any given time. That translates to an average of 2200+ misconfiguration issues per month.

(McAfee)

The same cloud computing statistics from McAfee also highlight that organizations, on average, see 12.2 data loss incidents monthly. Moreover, these incidents have affected at least 80% of the organizations per month in the past years.

Once again, most of these cloud data breaches occur because of internal threats and compromised accounts. Importantly, the negligence — lack of additional monitoring and security controls when it comes to protecting sensitive data.

For instance, one of the most common misconfigurations in AWS is that S3 bucket encryption is not turned on. Beyond that, 5.3% of all S3 storage buckets in the AWS are open to the public with “world read” permission.

Equally important to note is that the organizations that have turned on Data Loss Prevention (DLP) experience an average of 1500+ DLP incidents monthly.

McAfee also reports that 27% of organizations have faced data loss incidents from their cloud infrastructure.

Challenges to Cloud Adoption

25. 40% of organizations (up from 37% last year) say they lack the staff or expertise to adopt or scale up the existing cloud resources.

(Flexera)

The second biggest barrier to cloud adoption or expansion is legal and regulatory compliance, with over 37% of organizations saying the data protection laws prevent them from using it.

(Most governments do not prevent cloud adoption, but there are subsections like the transfer of personal information from one country to another that have a significant impact).

31% fear the potential cloud data breaches, disaster recovery, lack of security services, and loss of corporate data, making it the third-biggest barrier to cloud adoption and expansion.

18% of organizations indicated they lack the budget for managing cloud spend. Some 30% of organizations say cloud infrastructure doesn’t allow them to integrate the existing IT environment.

Availability (6%), the performance of apps in the cloud (9%), and lack of support by the cloud storage service (9%) are other top barriers to cloud adoption and expansion.

26. 49% of cloud users say lack of visibility can slow or stop cloud adoption.

(Flexera)

According to Flexera’s cloud computing stats, at least 43% of organizations may stop or slow cloud spending because of high cloud costs.

42% of organizations say the lack of personal control in cloud storage services may hinder cloud adoption.

Plus, 22% of organizations have come to believe that cloud server is not secure enough, which is the fourth-unforeseen factor that may hinder cloud adoption and expansion.

27. Organizations say their cloud computing spending was over budget by an average of 13% (down from 24% in 2021).

(Flexera)

Additionally, organizations estimate their cloud computing spending will grow by 29% in the next 12 months.

Flexera’s cloud computing statistics highlight that although organizations are increasing their cloud spending, their cloud footprint is accelerating slower than earlier.

However, it is critical to note that the amount of cloud spending wasted by organizations is increasing year over year. For instance, organizations estimate they wasted about 32% of their cloud spending in 2021, which is 2% higher than the previous year’s self-estimate.

Flexera suggests that organizations must forecast and optimize the processes to reduce their cloud computing spending or at least stop wasting cloud resources.

For context, organizations can reduce their cloud data center spending by leveraging discount options provided by third-party cloud platforms.

As of 2022, only 32% of organizations say they use AWS Reserved Instances.

Here’s how many organizations are leveraging discounts offered by third-party cloud platforms:

Cloud Computing Trends

28. Containerization will play a strategic role for 61% of organizations within 18 months; today, it is already strategic for nearly 20%.

(IBM, Gartner)

According to IBM’s cloud computing trends, 28% of organizations say containerization will play a strategic role in the future.

Today, container adoption is about 50%, up from less than 20% in 2019. Gartner estimates that 70% of global companies will run more than two containerized applications in production by 2023.

General Cloud Computing Statistics

29. 100 trillion gigabytes of data will be stored in cloud services by 2025.

(Thales Group)

That translates to 50% of the world’s data. Back in 2015, data stored in the cloud accounted for 25% of the world’s data.

Internet statistics indicate that some 5 billion people are online. By the end of this decade, 7.5 billion people will be online.

Advent technologies like 5G will power further growth in the global cloud space. The same cloud computing statistics from Thales Group also indicate that businesses faced a ransomware threat every 11 seconds in 2021, up from one thread per 14 seconds in 2019 and 40 seconds in 2016.

30. The cloud gaming market generated over US$ 1.5 billion in 2021.

(Newzoo)

Newzoo’s cloud computing statistics highlight that over 21.9 million active players are participating in cloud gaming.

Plus, it highlights the number of players actively participating in cloud gaming will triple by 2024. That is — there will be over 58.6 million active players in the cloud gaming space.

And the revenues generated in the cloud gaming market will quadruple, and the cloud gaming market will be worth around US$ 6.3 billion by 2024.

As All The Cloud Computing Stats Indicate — Cloud is the New Normal!

Cloud computing now represents a third of all IT spending. By 2024, more than 45% of IT spending on on-premise infrastructure, software, and application infrastructure will shift from traditional solutions to the cloud.

As underlined, almost all organizations are concerned about their data security in the cloud. Still, they are embracing it. So, regardless of whether you are a small business or large enterprise, if you haven’t still considered cloud technology, it is late but still a good time to migrate to the cloud.

Source

1. Gartner
2. Fortune Business Insights
3. Flexera State of Cloud 2022
4. Flexera State of Cloud 2021
5. O’Reilly
6. Fortinet
7. IBM
8. GoodFirms
9. McAfee's Risk Report
10. McAfee
11. Gartner
12. Thales Group
13. Newzoo
14. Statista

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