In July, we launched our Cloud Management Maturity Assessment—an online tool designed to help you identify which phase of cloud management maturity you’re in—with best practices to help you move to the next phase of cloud maturity.
The assessment is based on our maturity model framework which measures three areas within a Cloud Center of Excellence: cloud financial management, operations, and security and compliance. Within the assessment, respondents are asked demographic questions (e.g. industry), cloud strategy questions (e.g. cloud providers being used), and diagnostic questions for each area of excellence which correspond to the four phases of maturity (visibility, optimization, governance and automation, and business integration).
Over the past several weeks we’ve been analyzing the initial results, based on a sample size of 300 submissions, to identify initial patterns. Disclaimer: this article only dives into several questions from the assessment and doesn’t encompass every question in the assessment.
Cloud maturity assessment demographics
Let’s start by looking at the top three categories within the demographic profile questions. From an industry perspective, approximately 39% of respondents work for organizations in the Information Technology industry, followed by Financial Services at 12%, and Digital Marketing and Advertising as the third most represented industry with 7% of respondents.
Breaking down demographics by job title, the majority of respondents work in Operations and Engineering roles, with approximately 14% as Architects, 13% as IT Admins, and 10% as CIOs.
Cloud strategy
Moving onto cloud strategy questions, the first question, “What best describes your company’s cloud strategy?” was in line with trends we’re seeing in the market, specifically the increase in multi-cloud adoption. 44.92% of respondents indicated that they have a multi-cloud strategy, with 25.39% currently using a single cloud, and 23.05% planning to migrate.
Taking this one step further, respondents are given cloud provider options (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, VMC or vSphere) with the ability to multi-select. The answers selected resulted in more than 20 different cloud combinations. When companies are only using a single cloud, unsurprisingly they are most likely to be using either only AWS (~18% of respondents) or only Azure (~15% of respondents). A mere ~2% are using only GCP and ~4% using only Oracle.
What we find more intriguing is the combinations of clouds organizations are leveraging—the most common being AWS and Azure at ~17% of respondents, followed by a combination of AWS, Azure, and GCP at about 5%. The chart below highlights the top combinations. Another interesting point is that of the 300 surveyed, 26% said they are using 2 clouds, and ~17% said they are using 3 or more clouds. As more people take the assessment, we’ll monitor closely how these trends evolve.
Phases of cloud management maturity
Within the assessment, each area of excellence has 4 or 5 diagnostic questions, and so far we’re seeing that the majority of respondents, regardless of the area of excellence, are in the visibility phase of their cloud management maturity – with 78.6% currently working on improving visibility for cloud financial management, 99% for operations, and 94% for security and compliance. Disclaimer: Because respondents can take the assessment across one or more areas, these results depict the percentages within each area of excellence and are not the placements holistically.
Being mindful that approximately 20% of respondents are still migrating to the cloud, it’s not surprising that the majority falls into the visibility phase. The visibility phase includes activities such as developing a consistent cloud tagging strategy, defining standard configurations, and enabling log collection and event alerting. In order for an organization to be successful in the cloud, it’s crucial to build a strong foundation for reporting and collaboration across teams and business units.
Based on the sample size evaluated, we can potentially conclude that organizations may be more mature in cloud financial management as opposed to the other areas of excellence. 16.8% of respondents were placed into the optimization phase of financial management, which is significantly higher than operations and security and compliance placements.
Find out where you land in our framework, get best practices and next steps for advancing your cloud management maturity by taking the Cloud Management Maturity Assessment today. It only takes five minutes!
