25 Amazing Cloud Adoption Statistics [2023]: Cloud Migration, Computing, And More

Cloud adoption research summary. The cloud has become a crucial backbone for many U.S. companies. From data storage and databases to servers and networking software, it’s an inexpensive and invaluable tool. To highlight just how important the cloud is, we’ve done our research, which shows that:

• 94% of enterprises use cloud services.

• 67% of enterprise infrastructure is now cloud-based.

• 92% of businesses have a multi-cloud strategy in place or in the works.

• The global cloud computing industry has a market size of $480.04 billion, as of 2022.

• The U.S. public cloud market is projected to reach $258.10 billion by the end of 2023.

For further analysis, we broke down the data in the following ways:
Usage | Projections | Trends | Benefits | Services

General cloud adoption statistics

Cloud adoption has become far more common over the years due to its many benefits. However, before we dive into those in more detail, here are some general facts about cloud adoption as a whole:

• In 2020 alone, 61% of businesses migrated their workloads to the cloud.

  The COVID-19 Pandemic had a huge impact on many businesses in the United States. For safety reasons, many began implementing remote work plans for employees, most of which wouldn’t have been possible without cloud adoption.

• 48% of businesses choose to store their most important data in the cloud.

  In fact, as of 2023, 60% of all corporate data is stored in the cloud. That means that a majority of businesses use the cloud for storage, and nearly half trust its security and reliability enough to store their more crucial data.

• The global cloud computing market is expected to have a CAGR of 16.3% through 2026.

  Worth an already impressive $445.3 billion in 2021, the global cloud computing market is expected to grow to $947.3 billion by 2026. That’s a growth of over half a billion USD in only five years.

Cloud adoption statistics by cloud usage

Due to the recent and rapid adoption of the cloud by businesses, it’s unsurprising that people are using its services more and more. When it comes to the sheer vastness of current cloud usage, here are some insights our research uncovered:

• The average employee uses 36 cloud-based services every day.

  With over 200 cloud services that fall under the category of collaboration (e.g., Dropbox, Microsoft Teams, or Google Suite), it’s no surprise that employees use several of these services daily.

• The average enterprise uses 1,295 cloud services.

  In 2016 that number was 1,022, meaning the number of cloud services used by enterprises increased by 26.7% in less than five years.

• 87% of businesses have a hybrid cloud strategy.

  As the name would suggest, hybrid cloud solutions attempt to blend two or more different types of clouds for a specific purpose. This strategy tends to save businesses a lot of money and makes their systems more flexible, which is why 45% of them prioritize some sort of hybrid solution.

Cloud adoption projections

The cloud has become an extremely popular and widely-used tool among enterprises, despite not becoming mainstream until the early 2000s. What’s more, as internet use continues to increase over time and remote working becomes even more popular, the cloud will become even more widespread.

According to our extensive research;

• By the end of 2022, U.S. cloud spending reached over $90 billion (27.8% growth compared to 2021).

• By 2025, there will be an estimated 175 zettabytes of stored data on the cloud. (a 61% increase from today).

• The cloud computing industry market is expected to grow by $287.03 billion between 2020-2025.

• By 2026, 45% of all enterprise IT budgets will be spent on the cloud.

• 61% of businesses plan to optimize cloud costs in the next year.

Cloud adoption trends and projections

Cloud adoption wouldn’t have such a bright future if not for its rapid growth within the past decade. To understand just how much cloud use has grown, here are some interesting facts about it in recent years:

• Between 2010 and 2020, the global cloud computing and hosting market size increased by cloud 535%.

  In 2010, the global cloud computing and hosting market was only worth $24.6 billion, a number which grew to a whopping $156.4 billion in 2020.

  

• Public cloud services grew by 18.4% year-over-year in 2021.

  In 2020, that growth was only 6.1%, meaning that cloud adoption is growing rapidly year after year. In fact, the section of the market that’s seen the most growth is Desktop as a Service (DaaS), which grew by 95.4% in 2020, and 61.5% in 2021.

  

• Cloud computing spending increased by 35.3% year-over-year in 2021.

  In 2020, spending was around $140 billion; however, by 2021, this increased to $191.7 billion in 2021. If this trend continues, spending will have exceeded over $200 billion by the end of 2022.

Cloud adoption statistics by top benefits of adoption

Cloud adoption wouldn’t be so popular with businesses if it didn’t have substantial benefits. From saving money to having more organized and accessible data, our research shows that:

• 94% of businesses report significant online security improvements after adopting the cloud.

  The cloud is incredibly secure because it uses encryption. Therefore, information is less accessible to hackers and anyone who isn’t meant to have access. In fact, many cloud services allow users to personalize their security settings.

• 80% of companies report operation improvements after adopting the cloud.

  In fact, these companies report improvements as early as a few months after adoption. The size of the company also didn’t matter, as small startups and large corporations all saw benefits.

• 82% of small and medium businesses report reduced costs after adopting cloud tech.

  Further, 59% of these businesses also report productivity benefits for their IT teams/departments. With these numbers in mind, it’s no surprise that 78% of small and medium businesses have already chosen to adopt the cloud.

• 93% of businesses identify cloud security as the #1 concern.

  Despite the fact that the cloud often makes important data more secure, many businesses still worry about cloud security. In fact, 66% of businesses are worried about data leakage as their top concern, followed by visibility into file downloads (45%), file uploads (50%), DLP policy violations (50%), and external sharing from the cloud (55%).

Cloud adoption statistics by cloud storage services

Storage is one of the most crucial functions of the cloud, and companies know this. With that in mind, here are some interesting facts about cloud storage services:

• 60% of all corporate data is stored in the cloud.

  That’s double what it was less than a decade ago, in 2015, when only 30% of all corporate data was stored on the cloud.

• There are four companies that own 67% of the world’s cloud infrastructure.

  The largest of which is Amazon Web Services, which has a 32% market share against the competition. The other top four companies include Azure (20%), Google Cloud (9%), and Alibaba Cloud (6%).

Cloud adoption statistics FAQ

1. What percentage of companies use cloud services?

   94% of companies use cloud services in 2023. This massive percentage is partially due to a massive shift that occurred in 2020. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, which caused a reliance on remote work, 61% of businesses migrated their workloads to the cloud. Further, even at 94%, cloud adoption is still growing in 2023.

2. What percentage of workloads are in the cloud?

   Roughly 41% of enterprise workloads were in the cloud. In recent years, this percentage has continued to increase. By 2021, 33% of surveyed enterprises were running over 50% of their workloads on the cloud, indicating that this trend will continue to increase over time.

   This adoption has been trending for a reason, as there are many benefits to having workloads in the cloud. Some of the most prominent are better elasticity, cost efficiency, increased collaboration, business agility, disaster recovery, and a competitive edge.

3. How fast is the cloud computing market growing?

   The global cloud computing market is growing at an impressive rate, with a projected CAGR of 16.3% through 2026. That would mean an increase from a market size of $445.3 billion in 2021 to $947.3 billion by 2026, over half a billion USD in only five years.

   Recent growth has also been considerable. In 2021, public cloud services grew by 18.4% year-over-year. Additionally, the section of the market that’s seen the most growth is Desktop as a Service (DaaS), which grew by 95.4% in 2020, and 61.5% in 2021.

4. How many cloud users are there?

   There are over 3.6 billion cloud users in the world. That’s 47% of the global population, meaning that nearly half of everyone on earth uses the cloud. In fact, of all American internet users, a whopping 69% of them either stored data online or used a web-based software application.

5. Who is the market leader in cloud computing?

   Amazon is the market leader in cloud computing. Overall, the company’s service, Amazon Web Services, has a 32% market share over the competition. The other top four companies include Azure (20%), Google Cloud (9%), and Alibaba Cloud (6%). Combined, these four companies alone account for 67% of the total market share.

6. What is mitigation in cloud computing?

   Mitigation is the process of minimizing risks. For example, to avoid the risk of unauthorized data access, companies will often implement a zero-trust security framework where all users must regularly be authenticated and authorized while working on the Cloud. In this way, the company is using this policy as a mitigation strategy.

Conclusion

The cloud has become an incredibly popular and useful tool for enterprises and citizens alike, especially since the COVID-19 Pandemic began. In 2020 alone, 61% of businesses migrated their workloads to the cloud. Now, as of 2023, 94% of enterprises use cloud services.

And there’s a reason why, as the cloud comes with many benefits, from cost-cutting to data security. In fact, 80% of companies report operation improvements after adopting the cloud.

Overall, impressive growth like this has caused the global cloud the global computing market to reach $480.04 billion, with further gains expected in the coming years. With an expected CAGR of 16.3% through 2026, the global cloud computing market is expected to grow to $947.3 billion.

Sources:

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Author

Jack Flynn

Jack Flynn is a writer for Zippia. In his professional career he’s written over 100 research papers, articles and blog posts. Some of his most popular published works include his writing about economic terms and research into job classifications. Jack received his BS from Hampshire College.