Fifty-three percent of technology companies say they need a cloud strategy for emerging technologies like AI and 55% need it to reduce IT costs/optimize spending. Over half (54%) are integrating AI with the cloud in order to improve operational efficiency, according to a Rackspace Technology sponsored survey of 1,420 IT decision-makers across industries conducted in November of 2024.
Why Are Tech Companies Looking to Move Digital Workloads?
A majority (74%) of tech companies have considered repatriating or have repatriated workloads from the public cloud back to private or on-premise clouds to improve data security/compliance (63%), cost savings/budget constraints (53%), infrastructure/customization control (39%) and better integration (39%). Most of those that have moved digital workloads report success with performance/data sovereignty (92%), integration (90%), cost savings/budget constraint (87%), data security/compliance (84%) and unexpected cloud service downtime/reliability (73%).
Challenges to Aligning AI Strategy with Revenue Goals
The leading challenges to aligning AI strategy with revenue goals in the tech sector are lack of cross-functional collaboration (43%), resistance to change in revenue-generating units (36%), inadequate data or technology infrastructure (34%) and insufficient resources or budget (31%).
What Technologies Will Be Most Important to Tech Companies Near-Term?
When asked what tools, platforms or methodologies are most critical to IT operations in the next year or two, data security/compliance platforms topped the list (55%), followed by:
• DBaaS (database as a service for scalable data management) (48%)
• Hybrid cloud for multi-environment deployment (39%)
• PaaS for app development and deployment (39%)
• AI/ML platforms for intelligent app development (36%)
• Edge computing for distributed apps (26%)
• Integration platforms for data transformation (23%).
It is worth noting that data security/privacy/compliance scored high among tech companies throughout the survey in terms of:
• a key driver for adopting edge computing (62%)
• great current importance (53%)
• difficulty keeping up with cloud technologies (46%)
• a significant resource gap in managing cloud (45%)
• anticipated challenge in aligning with cloud strategy (45%)
Survey Methodology
Commissioned by Rackspace Technology, the survey was conducted by Coleman Parkes Research in October and November 2024. Findings are based on the responses of 1,420 IT decision-makers across technology, manufacturing/logistics, retail, hospitality/travel, energy, healthcare/pharma/biomedical, government, media/entertainment, and financial service sectors in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Most companies/organizations polled have from 1,000 to 10,000+ employees and annual revenue between $50m and $15b.
