HashiCorp, a provider of multi-cloud infrastructure automation software, has released its 2023 State of Cloud Strategy Survey, showing positive business outcomes for organizations that demonstrate high maturity in adopting, standardizing, and scaling their multi-cloud adoption.

This year’s survey, commissioned by HashiCorp and once again performed by Forrester Consulting, focuses on operational cloud maturity, defined by the adoption of a combination of technological and organizational best practices at scale. Results highlighted that high-maturity organizations benefit most in the areas of security, governance, reliability, and cost. Organizations also reported their most common multi-cloud barrier was a shortage of cloud skills, indicating that attracting, nurturing, and retaining engineering talent remains an industry-wide challenge.

“This year’s State of Cloud Strategy Survey showed meaningful differences between high-maturity organizations further in their cloud journeys and low-maturity organizations that have yet to standardize,” said Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO, HashiCorp. “While low-maturity organizations face difficulties in staffing, security, and costs, high-maturity organizations are able to use their multi-cloud approach to attract and retain talent, implement platform teams, save money, and improve security. The data confirm that as organizations progress along their cloud adoption journey, they realize important benefits that improve both technical and business outcomes.”

Key findings include:

• 56% of respondents boosted cloud spending in the last year: Despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment, over half of respondents continue to increase investment in cloud spending. Nearly all report opportunities to optimize that spend, and over half of mature organizations say their multi-cloud strategy is actually helping them save money.
• 92% of high cloud maturity organizations say multi-cloud is working: 73% of overall respondents say multi-cloud is helping them reach business goals, and an additional 19% say they expect it to in the next year.
• Skills shortages ranked as the top multi-cloud barrier: Respondents of all maturity levels noted that the lack of skilled cloud talent is the most common issue, hindering companies’ ability to operationalize multi-cloud. Mature organizations have a key advantage, however, with 74% saying their multi-cloud strategy helps them attract, motivate, and retain talent.
• Security ranked as the top multi-cloud benefit: Among respondents, security is ranked as the top factor in multi-cloud success and the most common benefit from a multi-cloud strategy. While multi-cloud clearly can create security challenges, working in multiple cloud environments can also help organizations keep their security professionals engaged, and be a forcing function toward more intentional oversight of their security operations.
• 92% of respondents are adopting (17%), standardizing (36%), or scaling (39%) platform teams: For the companies with the most mature cloud operations, 69% are scaling their use of platform teams throughout the organization, compared to just 14% of low-maturity organizations. Platform teams are clearly becoming an essential component of the enterprise cloud-adoption journey.