Cloud Adoption Trends and Strategies

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Meet the Experts

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Dave McCarthy

Research Vice President, Cloud and Edge Services, Worldwide Infrastructure Research

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Penny Madsen

Senior Research Director, Cloud and Edge Services, Worldwide Infrastructure Research



IDC's Cloud Adoption Trends and Strategies offers analysis into the current ownership profile and investment intentions of cloud buyers across a wide range of company sizes, industries, and regions. It covers barriers to adoption and compelling reasons to act, along with buyer "persona" segmentation and potential targeting criteria. Cloud buyers' current investments, technology adoption plans, and future investment insights are backed by research from companion survey products such as Cloud Pulse. This CIS provides technology vendors of all sizes with the knowledge required to build, market, and sell products and services across the cloud stack. IDC's Cloud Adoption Trends and Insights CIS is a companion to the Cloud Pulse SIS, which is itself part of the BuyerView product catalog. The latter provides quarterly insights on cloud adoption using a worldwide survey of cloud buyers.


Markets and Subjects Analyzed


  • Differing cloud buyer personas
  • Hybrid, multicloud, public and dedicated cloud adoption, drivers and inhibitors
  • Cloud spending and technology investment plans
  • Impact of AI on cloud adoption and operations
  • Cloud application deployment and movement
  • Macroeconomic impacts on cloud buyers' strategies
  • Customer playbooks and journey to cloud
  • Cloud vendor considerations
  • ROI and value measurement
  • IT staff skills and reskilling

Core Research


  • Worldwide Cloud Spending Priorities
  • Cloud Application and Workload Trends
  • Cloud Transformation and Modernization
  • Cloud Buyer-Vendor Requirements
  • Worldwide Impacts of Macroeconomic pressures on Cloud Buyer Behavior
  • The Critical Role of the Cloud Ecosystem
  • Cloud Sustainability: Separating Immediate Needs from the Nice-to-Have Ones
  • Cloud Resiliency, DR Adoption, and Spend
  • XOps and the Cloud: FinOps, DevOps, DevSecOps, SecOps, ITOps, and CloudOps
  • Preparing for New Workloads: AI
  • The Automated Business: Automation's Impact on the Delivery of Cloud
  • The Cloud-Native Future and Cloud
  • The Role of the CIO Versus the CTO in Cloud
  • Dedicated Cloud Adoption Trends
  • Public Cloud Adoption Trends
  • Cloud Customer Case Studies
  • Cloud Vendor News and Event Analysis
  • Defining Cloud ROI

In addition to the insight provided in this service, IDC may conduct research on specific topics or emerging market segments via research offerings that require additional IDC funding and client investment.


Key Questions Answered


  1. What is the state of cloud adoption, and what factors are driving cloud technology and service buyers of all sizes to make purchase decisions?
  2. Aside from budget considerations, what other factors are influencing the size and type of investment in cloud? How much do macroeconomic factors matter? What are cloud buyers saying they need more certainty about?
  3. What kind of cloud deployments — public, dedicated, and hosted — are being considered for what applications and workloads? What reasons are given for these choices? How much does security, compliance, cost, and ROI count in these decisions?
  4. Which cloud technology and service vendors are considered the most strategically important to future strategy and why?
  5. What qualities must providers possess to help companies get cloud right?
  6. Is today's cloud fit for purpose?
  7. What management and deployment challenges do organizations face with cloud?
  8. How do buyers use FinOps and other tools to overcome cloud management challenges?

Companies Covered