Cloud Strategy Survey shows the path to cloud success requires platform engineering capabilities

HashiCorp, has released its 2024 State of Cloud Strategy Survey. As organizations continue building their cloud programs by adopting lifecycle management for infrastructure and security, survey results show that despite this momentum only 8% of organizations qualify as having highly mature cloud programs.

“This year’s State of Cloud Strategy Survey focused on the impact cloud maturity, defined as adopting, standardizing, and scaling key practices has across the entire organization. The results show that the majority of organizations struggle to deliver cloud programs resulting in positive business impact: 40% of low-maturity organizations report they are still waiting for their cloud investments to pay off,” said Meghan Liese, VP Product Marketing, HashiCorp. “However, organizations who have done the right things and achieved high cloud maturity are realizing benefits including increased productivity, stronger security, and reduced cloud costs. We’ve seen that the path to cloud maturity lies with platform teams and gaining control over their cloud estate with infrastructure and security lifecycle management.”

Key findings from the HashiCorp 2024 State of Cloud Strategy Survey

General cloud programs: Organizations with highly mature cloud programs have implemented cloud practices to provide standardized shared services for infrastructure and security lifecycle management, and 67% of highly mature organizations deliver these services through a platform team. With centralized management and automation they get a better return on their cloud investments – while highly cloud mature organizations spend more on the cloud, they also waste less of that money.

66% of respondents reported they increased cloud infrastructure spending in the last year, though 91% of respondents said they experienced at least some cloud waste.

64% of the highly mature respondents are experiencing a shortage of skilled staff, but 67% of highly mature organizations reported relying on platform teams, which help them maximize the impact of their teams.

70% of all respondents – and 85% of highly mature organizations – are using, or planning to use, AI to power cloud infrastructure.

Infrastructure Lifecycle Management: Highly mature cloud organizations build, deploy, and manage their critical applications through a holistic approach across the entire lifecycle of infrastructure management with unified workflows to reduce risk and boost developer velocity.

Though 95% of respondents say they have at least started the process of establishing a platform team, only 42% currently rely on their platform teams to fully standardize cloud operations throughout the organization.

High-maturity organizations are twice as likely to have standardized on platform teams.

Security Lifecycle Management: Highly mature cloud organizations manage the full lifecycle of security with an identity-driven approach to inspect, protect, and connect secrets and credentials.

86% of high-maturity organizations are realizing stronger security in the cloud.

Security is also the most commonly cited factor determining cloud infrastructure success, due to the challenge of secret sprawl and the need for full security lifecycle management.