Cloud use is standard in German companies

For more than ten years, we have been describing the development of cloud computing in German companies every year in our Cloud Monitor. In the meantime, the use of the cloud has become the norm: Companies that do not use cloud solutions are the exception today, our Cloud Monitor 2023.

According to the survey, 97 per cent of German companies with at least 50 employees rely on cloud computing. Most companies use hybrid models in which public and private cloud services are used in parallel. This allows workloads to be distributed to the appropriate environment depending on requirements. At the same time, hybrid models are more complex to manage. 82 per cent are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy to rely on more than one provider. 

The cloud-first approach is becoming the standard: more than half of the companies (57 percent) are now pursuing this strategy - a year earlier it was only 40 percent. Cloud-only is also on the rise. 16 percent are relying on this strategy (Cloud Monitor 2022: 9 percent).

The main focus of cloud use is currently on more secure IT: six out of ten companies want to increase IT security with their cloud strategy. This result shows the high need for security in times of geopolitical tensions and increasing cyber attacks. In this context, 79 percent of the companies use DevSecOps to improve their security. DevSecOps extends DevOps - i.e. methods that combine development and operations - to include security aspects. 

Companies have two main requirements for cloud services: performance and stability. These two aspects are essential for three out of four companies. For 58 percent, it is also crucial that the providers operate their data centres in the legal territory of the EU.

69 percent of companies succeed in reducing their IT costs through cloud use. However, the use of public clouds shows that there is still room for improvement. Public cloud environments are mostly provided manually, automated provision exists in only 29 percent of companies with public cloud solutions. Automation in particular offers significant cost advantages, which have only been exploited to a limited extent to date.

This is increasingly relevant, as more and more companies are outsourcing large parts of their applications to the public cloud. Of all companies using the public cloud, 28 percent currently run more than half of their productive applications from the cloud - in the next three years, this share will more than double to 64 percent. 

Other topics in the Cloud Monitor 2023:

• Which stakeholders are responsible for the cloud transformation in companies? 
• How will cloud costs be managed? 
• And what role does the topic of ESG play in connection with cloud computing?

The Cloud Monitor 2023 is based on a representative company survey conducted in April and May 2023. Executives with specialist responsibility from 518 German companies with at least 50 employees - including 124 companies with 5,000 or more employees - were surveyed.