Dive Brief:

• More than 80% of companies use a multi-cloud strategy, typically comprised of a hybrid cloud model which relies on public and private clouds, according to Rightscale's 2018 State of the Cloud. The report is based on a survey of almost 1,000 technical executives and cloud practitioners.
• On average, companies are using 4.8 private and public clouds to run applications and experiment with new services. The increased cloud use has sparked more investment. One-fifth of enterprises plan to more than double cloud spending, and another 17% expect to increase cloud spending by 50-100%, according to the report.  
• Though security remains a leading concern for how organizations approach the cloud, three-quarters of respondents face challenges in managing cloud spend. Optimizing existing cloud use is a priority for the majority of respondents, particularly because users waste 35% of spend. 

Dive Insight:

While it is easy to obsess over competition in the cloud market, the challenges organizations face in implementing a surefire cloud strategy can often go understated. In order to keep pace with competition, cloud service providers have been quick to roll out scores of new services and adjust pricing, allowing to customers to buy cloud services by the minute or the second.

AWS lets customers know when they have low cloud utilization, which costs the giant $500 million per year.

But that amount of choice can prove chaotic to cloud customers. Organizations face challenges in the ability to manage workloads, particularly with services spread across multiple clouds. And each department in a company may use the cloud differently, which can sometimes lead to redundant and wasteful cloud investments.

Though companies are looking to invest more in cloud services, an increase in spending is only fruitful if companies understand what spending is for.  

Multi-cloud offers an advantage for organizations seeking out the cloud service that best fits business needs, whether that is data analysis, machine learning or cold storage for historic data. What's important, however, is that each new instance of cloud usage is well-documented and fits into a company's overarching tech strategy.