Flexera’s 2025 State of the Cloud Report—the de facto standard for cloud computing trends—started as a little more than a snapshot capturing responses to 15 or so questions on the adoption and use of cloud services. Now, it’s a highly anticipated report that explores the views of 759 global IT professionals and executive leaders. Representing a broad cross-section of industries and organizations, these cloud decision-makers and users weigh in on cloud consumption patterns, budget implications and optimization strategies.
Thanks to its long history, the report delivers important baselines and growth trends as well as dynamic insights on emerging topics and services as the industry evolves. For example, at its iteration, containers and AI were maybe a sparkle in the eye of some forward-thinking technologists. Today, the insights provided in this report are important resources for most IT teams. Three highlights of this year’s report include:
- FinOps practices are gaining in popularity
- AWS and Azure continue their battle for top cloud provider
- More organizations are turning to MSPs for cloud management
More dedicated FinOps teams
Fifty-nine percent of organizations have a dedicated FinOps team, an increase from 51% last year. We expect this trend to continue as cloud consumption continues to grow year over year. Even though respondents indicated that about one-fifth of their workloads had been repatriated in the last year (moved from the cloud to on-premises and/or data center environments), the overall footprint of workloads in the cloud increased. While that may seem like a small hole in the bucket, the flow in still far exceeds the flow out, resulting in net new growth of cloud-based workloads.
Does your company have a FinOps team to advise,
manage or execute cloud cost optimization strategies?
FinOps adoption of cloud cost optimization strategies is rising, with 59% of organizations now using dedicated teams for cloud cost optimization.
What percentage of cloud-based workflows have you repatriated?
Workloads in public cloud
More than half of workloads are already in public cloud, with continued migration expected over the next 12 months.
Increased cloud consumption continues to usher in the chance for wasted or non-optimized spend. This reality has fueled the growth of FinOps teams across organizations of all sizes as they work to implement processes and tools to address the growing costs associated with increased use.
As organizations turn to AI, especially generative AI (GenAI), we can expect additional spend to increase. This year’s report showed that a whopping 83% of respondents already currently use or are experimenting this new technology—the most out of any new PaaS offering listed in the history of the report. Just as early cloud usage led to unwieldly costs, AI spend could undoubtedly be non-optimal as well, opening the door for cost optimization now coined “FinOps for AI.” Watch for more information on this emerging topic on the Flexera blog and the Flexera product.
AWS and Azure continue to battle for top cloud provider
For as long as we’ve published the State of the Cloud Report, the battle for the top cloud provider has been a two-horse race. (Sorry, Google Cloud Platform, but if it is any consolation, you’ve had a lock on third place for a decade.) This year is no different: Only a few percentage points exist between AWS and Azure. More SMBs rely on AWS, and Azure holds a slight lead among enterprises. When combining SMBs and enterprises, and considering both “significant” and “some” workloads, AWS and Azure run virtually side by side in market share.
Enterprise use of public cloud providers
AWS leads enterprise cloud adoption, followed by Azure and Google Cloud, reinforcing a multi‑cloud strategy anchored by hyperscalers.
SMB use of public cloud providers
AWS leads SMB cloud adoption, followed by Azure and Google Cloud, mirroring enterprise multi‑cloud patterns.
More organizations manage complexity with MSPs
Operating cloud environments and optimizing costs becomes more challenging as more workloads and data find their way to the public cloud. An increasing number of organizations are handing off at least some of this complexity to managed service providers (MSPs). This allows internal teams to instead better focus their resources on their core competencies of differentiating products and services that drive their bottom line.
Nearly half (48%) of SMBs report partnering with MSPs for the management of at least some public cloud environments—up 12 percentage points over last year. More enterprises also report a reliance on MSPs, jumping from 56% in 2024 to 62% this year.
Flexera has supported this evolving trend by investing significant resources and expertise toward advancing the MSP feature set of Cloud Cost Optimization and Flexera One platform.
Utilization of MSPs for managing public cloud for all organizations
60% of organizations use MSPs for at least some cloud management, while 22% have no plans to adopt them.
Enterprise vs. SMB MSP utilization for managing public cloud
Enterprises rely more on MSPs for cloud management than SMBs, with 62% vs. 48% current usage.
New approaches to rising complexity
The Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report provides important guidance for company leaders, industry thought leaders and the cloud practitioners who have their hands on keyboards managing complex cloud environments.
We’ll continue to track existing trends and unearth new, evolving technologies that are being consumed by cloud professionals and assist you with the implications these insights provide.
Get the latest insights in cloud computing trends and cloud migration statistics by viewing the complete survey results here.
