New survey shows many organizations feel they achieved cloud maturity, but IT leaders find challenges in cloud strategy, governance and security

CDW has released its 2024 CDW Cloud Computing Research Report. The report, which examines insights from more than 900 IT decision-makers, explores organizational successes and challenges in navigating their cloud environments.

The survey found most (88 percent) of respondents feel they can effectively manage their cloud workloads, but not without challenges. IT decision-makers (63%) highlighted a lack of cloud governance or strategy as a key factor hindering their cloud management. Other concerns include lack of on-staff skills and security threats. These top barriers are causing inefficiencies and slowdowns, barring organizations from achieving optimal ROI from their cloud investments.

Additional insights include:

• IT decision-makers are feeling more confident and satisfied with their cloud strategies. 73 percent of respondents said the benefits of cloud lived up to their expectations. Greater reliability and recovery capabilities were cited most frequently as business benefits organizations have achieved from the cloud (57 percent), followed by greater access to data and applications for remote users (55 percent) and increased agility and efficiency (51 percent).
• Organizations are executing AI workloads in the cloud, but challenges persist. 68% of IT professionals say organizations are using artificial intelligence, with 53% running AI workloads in a hybrid cloud environment. When asked about the biggest challenges organizations face using AI, 45 percent of respondents cited the need to assure the quality of data for AI applications, and 43 percent cited the cost of AI technology.
• Security threats are a top concern for organizations, but decision-makers feel they are more protected in the cloud. 48% of IT professionals cite improved security as a business benefit they have received from the public cloud. Additionally, 51% of organizations who are not currently using AI highlighted privacy and security of data as a key reason why.

“Emerging technologies like generative AI are driving a heightened focus on cloud infrastructure as IT teams work to run these workloads,” said Phil Taylor, CTO, Digital Velocity at CDW. “Leaders recognize the success of their business outcomes is more closely related to the state of this environment than ever before. This report illustrates that while most leaders feel confident in their cloud environments and the benefits they provide to their organizations, they still struggle to navigate the skills gap, security threats and budgetary constraints.” 

The full report can be downloaded here. For more information on CDW’s cloud capabilities and offerings, please visit the company's website.