North Bridge, a growth equity and venture capital firm, in partnership with research analyst firm Wikibon, announced the results of its sixth annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey, which analyzes trends in cloud computing, adoption, use and challenges on a yearly basis.

The study provides the broadest and deepest exploration of cloud in the industry with 53 leading cloud companies, including Attunity, participating as collaborators. This year’s survey received 1,351 responses, a record-breaking number, representing a 60/40 balance of user/vendor perspectives spanning senior executives to practitioners across all industry sectors such as Technology, F.I.R.E., Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Media, Professional Services and Transportation.

According to Wikibon’s July 2016 report based on market conditions and recent public cloud revenue results of Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and IBM; public cloud spending is expected to accelerate rapidly, growing from $75B in 2015 to $522B by 2026 at a compound annual growth rate of 19%. Within each public cloud segment, continued rapid growth rates are also expected during this period: SaaS (19% CAGR), PaaS (33% CAGR), and IaaS (18% CAGR). Wikibon estimates that by 2026, the cloud will account for nearly 50% of spending related to enterprise hardware, software, and outsourcing services.

Cloud Strategy

Based on the survey, while slightly less than 50% of all companies either have a cloud first or cloud only strategy; some form of cloud strategy is pervasive among all with 90% of companies surveyed reporting that they use it in some way.

A new finding this year is the fact that a surprisingly high number, 42%, of companies surveyed derive 50% or more of their business through cloud-based applications. In fact, a whopping 79.9% of the companies surveyed were getting some revenue from the cloud. This speaks to the digital transformation occurring across many industries and how many are looking to not only move more quickly with the cloud but profit from it as well.

Where Data Lives

28% of companies surveyed mentioned they store 50% or more of their data in a public cloud versus 59% of companies surveyed store 50% or more of their data in a private cloud. These numbers are expected to converge over the next two years, with public cloud data storage expected to increase 18% and private cloud data storage expected to decrease 16%. This reflects specific benefits the public cloud offers in storage, dev/test environments, security and the ability to more easily integrate with analytics. Still, challenges persist with data in the cloud as vendor lock-in and portability are growing areas of difficulty when changing cloud providers for applications and/or infrastructure.

"This year's survey showed a strong move towards a more strategic and nuanced view of hybrid cloud. Broad SaaS adoption, deep analytics, and emerging areas such as IoT and AI highlight that the value of data is a large consideration when building a cloud strategy. As the cloud ecosystem matures, users are turning to a broad spectrum of technology and integration companies to help unlock the potential of cloud," said Stuart Miniman, Sr. Analyst at Wikibon.