As the cloud wars rage on, Microsoft Azure usage has finally surpassed that of AWS in several key areas according to a new report from Flexera.
To compile its new Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report, the company surveyed 753 cloud decision makers and users from around the world last year to learn more about the public, private and multi-cloud market.
According to the results of the survey, 80 percent of enterprises are using Azure compared to 77 percent that are using AWS. Microsoft's cloud computing service also surpassed AWS when it came to the number of virtual machines (VMs) enterprises are running with 71 percent running more than 51 VMs on Azure compared to 69 percent for AWS.
At the same time, 53 percent of enterprise Azure users spend at least $1.2m annually compared with 52 percent for AWS. When it came to private clouds, Microsoft Azure Stack increased its market share slightly year-over-year to reach 37 percent and it replaced VMware vSphere (31%) at the top spot.
Cloud spend and SMB cloud usage
When asked about the top challenges for organizations of all sizes, the respondents in Flexera's survey said that security, managing cloud spend and lack of resources or expertise were the biggest hurdles that need to be overcome.
Regarding cloud spend, organizations are over budget by an average of 13 percent and expect the amount they spend on cloud services to increase by 29 percent next year. Those surveyed also estimated that organizations waste 32 percent of their cloud budgets.
Flexera's report also highlighted how cloud spend by SMBs reflected a massive update with 52 percent of SMBs (organizations with 1,000 or fewer employees) spent more than $1.2m annually on cloud services which is up by 38 percent when compared to last year.
Senior director of cloud market strategy at Flexera, Brian Adler explained in a press release how cloud adoption was significantly accelerated as a result of the pandemic, saying:
"To maintain their pace of digital transformation, organizations must have the cloud play a significant role in their strategy. The cloud helps enterprises scale, be more agile, increase revenue and achieve business goals. We've seen that cloud adoption has been expanding for the past few years, with a great acceleration by the pandemic. However, in the post-pandemic world that we're shaping, we're seeing new trends coming into focus."
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