While we’re at analyst data, Forrester released a survey titled The 2022 State of Cloud Strategy Survey and found that 94 percent of respondents are overspending in the cloud.
Almost all noted avoidable cloud spending with the top reasons for this overinvestment, including idle or underused resources, overprovisioned resources, and a lack of needed skills.
One in four organizations said they surpassed their annual projected cloud spend, with just six percent saying they do not have any avoidable cloud spend.
Further key findings showed that 81 percent said they use multi-cloud, with a further 60 percent of respondents stating they are already using multi-cloud infrastructures and an additional 21 percent saying they will be within the next 12 months.
While most (90 percent) said that the multi-cloud “is working.”
Shocking, the cloud has the potential to be wasteful. Of course, everyone is overspending. Flexible spending is the key feature of the cloud, and when you’ve moved to consumption billing, if you in any way overconsume, you’re overspending.
The flip side of this is underutilized capital resources – remember the days of shelfware software or over speced servers designed for potential growth? I could easily argue that this is overspending too.
The difference here is you can manage it – and for the record, that’s a feature, not a bug.