Dive Brief:

• Half of organizations use more than one Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) vendor, according to the Cloudify's 2017 global survey and report on cloud technology. Approximately 23% of cloud users are on two clouds, 13% on three clouds and 15% on four or more clouds.

• OpenStack use was on par with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the market leader. The most common two-cloud combinations are AWS and Azure — a public/public combination — followed by AWS and OpenStack — a public/private combination. AWS and public/public combinations are favored by SMBs seeking to avoid vendor lock-in, while OpenStack and public/private or private/private combinations are preferred by larger organizations.

• Fewer than one in 10 organizations move to the cloud for cost savings incentives, according to the report. Operational efficiency and disruption and innovation emerged as the two greatest drivers. Cost-optimization and self-servicing were the biggest drivers to the public cloud, while performance and infrastructure innovation were the top criteria for selecting the private cloud.

Dive Insight:

AWS continues to dominate the IaaS market, but OpenStack's challenge to the company highlights that other niche players can nevertheless thrive. Despite losing several major backers, OpenStack remains the top open-source private cloud solution for companies.

Businesses looking for a specialized solution often turn to a niche player cloud instead of general providers like AWS, Microsoft or Google. The rise of hybrid cloud models also lets more companies take advantage of both types of providers.

The public cloud is expected to grow 18% year-over-year to $246.8 billion this year, according to Gartner, and IaaS is expected to see an even greater growth rate of 36.8% year-over-year.

Though hype persists about organizations moving to the cloud, companies across sectors aren't necessarily there yet. Hybrid cloud solutions have emerged, in part, because many enterprises are not fully prepared to migrate off on-prem infrastructure. When moving to the cloud, many companies are also trying to navigate vendor pricing and ensure they have redundancies across storage solutions. 

AWS' cloud lead is sure to persist, but as the market has matured, vendor's market share has leveled out. That's to the benefit of customers, which now have an array of trustworthy solutions to choose from. Organizations will continue to transition to the cloud, particularly as more cloud-based computing solutions become available.