53% of U.S. IT decision-makers say their C-Suite has given them the directive to increase cloud spending in 2024, suggesting the cloud industry is in the midst of a rebound following opposite orders in the lead-up to 2023 when only 18% were increasing spending, and most (40%) were directed to decrease cloud spending.

These are some of the top findings from the 2024 Cloud Outlook published by Wanclouds, a leading multi-cloud SaaS and managed service provider. The report, which is a follow-up to the widely cited and globally recognized Wanclouds' 2022 Cloud Cost and Optimization Outlook, found that organizations are upping their cloud investments despite ongoing economic uncertainty. However, the 500 IT decision-makers surveyed to inform the outlook indicated they are analyzing cloud costs more closely this year as the sticker shock of unexpected charges on businesses worsens. 67% of IT decision-makers admit that their business has been hit by unexpected cloud costs in the last six to 12 months, compared to 53% who said the same at the end of 2022.

Being hit with these unexpected costs has prompted the vast majority to assess their cloud spending on a more regular basis. In fact, nearly half (47%) of respondents say their organization carried out their last cloud spend assessment within a few weeks or less. When surveyed at the end of 2022, the vast majority had not done so for up to six months to a year.

Cloud spending has fluctuated at an unprecedented rate in the last few years, starting with the pandemic as organizations radically scaled their digital transformations, then tapering off in 2022 and 2023 due to supply chain disruptions and crippling economic pressures. While this year's rebound reflects the cloud's indispensability for many businesses, Wanclouds' report uncovered another catalyst for its growth: Artificial Intelligence. 41% of U.S. IT decision-makers say their biggest reason for cloud migrations in 2024 is to streamline software development and improve innovation with new technology (AI, etc.).

This hints at the scale of today's AI boom, with more companies building generative AI models that are trained and run in the cloud. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are currently working to optimize their platforms for AI. However, running AI applications on these platforms requires heavy use, which is another driver of high and often unexpected cloud costs.

"There's little doubt that AI is now a major driver of both cloud investment and overall cloud strategy for enterprises," said Faiz Khan, CEO of Wanclouds. "As a result, hybrid and multi-cloud environments are now becoming the status quo. Unfortunately, companies are still finding it challenging to track costs, backup applications, and migrate AI and complex workloads across these hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Therefore, it's not a surprise that IT leaders are looking for solutions that can automate some of these processes and give themselves a holistic view across these environments."

Wanclouds' 2024 Cloud Outlook also uncovered significant shifts in how organizations are deploying cloud applications this year. Additional highlights include:

• Hybrid & multi-cloud environments prevail: 84% of organizations utilizing the cloud are now deploying within hybrid or multi-cloud frameworks, signaling an embrace of diverse cloud infrastructure to meet evolving needs. Just 9% are now deploying on a single private cloud, and 7% on a single public cloud.

To view and download Wanclouds' 2024 Cloud Outlook, click here