8 Cloud Trends to Watch and Their Potential Costs: Where the Cloud is Headed

Where does the cloud go from here? It's a question that's on the minds of many businesses, with billions of dollars at stake. Gartner, a leading tech analyst, offers insights in their latest publications, "The Future of Cloud in 2029: The Journey From Technology to Business Necessity" and "Predicts 2025: Challenges Shaping the Future of Cloud Adoption." At their IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies conference in Sydney, Australia, Gartner outlined eight key trends that will shape the cloud landscape through 2029: cloud dissatisfaction, AI/machine learning (ML), multicloud, sustainability, digital sovereignty, supercloud, edge computing, and industry-specific solutions.

Joe Rogus, Gartner's advisory director, emphasized during his keynote that these trends are accelerating the cloud's transformation from a mere tech tool to a business disruptor and necessity. "Over the next few years, cloud will continue to unlock new business models, competitive advantages, and ways of achieving business missions," he stated. While this might sound like a broad stroke, it's a perspective I find a bit dated. I've been tracking the cloud since its inception, and it's been disrupting businesses for over a decade now.

Take Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example. Just two years after its launch in 2006, ZDNET's Larry Dignan foresaw that AWS would outshine Amazon's retail business in profitability. Fast forward to today, and AWS, despite contributing only 17% to Amazon's total revenue, stands as the company's most lucrative segment.

The cloud's impact is undeniable. According to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) company Spacelift, 96% of companies now use public clouds for some of their workloads. The 2024 CDW Cloud Computing Research Report further reveals that 45% of organizations have migrated at least half their applications to the public cloud, with 35% of the remaining planning to do so within three years.

Microsoft's shift is another testament to the cloud's influence. Contrary to popular belief, in 2024, 62% of Microsoft's revenue came from cloud services, dwarfing the 10% from Windows. This shift explains why Microsoft is heavily investing in Linux.

Cloud Dissatisfaction: A Growing Challenge

Despite its widespread adoption, many organizations are expressing dissatisfaction with their cloud experiences, particularly with costs. Gartner predicts that by 2028, a quarter of organizations will face significant dissatisfaction due to unrealistic expectations, poor implementation, or escalating costs. From my conversations at cloud trade shows, it's clear that many businesses are already grappling with their cloud bills. It's a common grievance.

CloudZero's 2024 State of Cloud Cost Intelligence Report supports this, showing that only 40% of organizations find their cloud costs meet expectations. The rest, about 60%, report higher-than-expected costs, with 49% saying costs are "a little higher than they should be" and 11% feeling costs are "way too high." Harness's FinOps in Focus 2025 report also projects a staggering $44.5 billion in cloud waste for 2025, against Gartner's estimate of $723.4 billion in total cloud spending this year. That's a lot of money and a lot of waste.

AI and ML: The New Cloud Workload

Businesses are poised to ramp up their cloud spending, particularly for AI and machine learning. Gartner forecasts that by 2029, half of all cloud compute resources will be dedicated to AI workloads, a significant jump from today's less than 10%. IDC, however, predicts that by 2025, 75% of businesses will use AI-driven cloud services, suggesting Gartner might be underestimating the speed of this shift. Yet, the question remains whether the investment in AI cloud will pay off. I have my reservations.

Multicloud and Hybrid Strategies: Flexibility Over Lock-in

The era of sticking to a single cloud provider is waning. Gartner highlights the rise of multicloud and hybrid strategies, where organizations mix private and public clouds to avoid vendor lock-in and optimize cost, performance, and resilience. By the end of 2025, Gartner expects over 85% of organizations to adopt these strategies.

This trend is already evident. Even my small business, Vaughan-Nichols & Associates, uses multiple clouds. A hybrid cloud integrates private and public environments, often managed with tools like Kubernetes, while a multicloud setup involves using services from multiple providers, such as Microsoft 365 for office software and Google Drive for personal file storage.

Fortinet's 2025 State of Cloud Security Report indicates that over 78% of organizations currently use two or more cloud providers, a figure echoed by Statista's 2024 data, which shows more than 70% of firms employing multiple cloud providers.

Sustainable Solutions: The Green Cloud

Gartner emphasizes that the green cloud is becoming central, driven by pressure on providers and users to minimize environmental impact. Major players like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are investing in renewable energy and carbon-neutral data centers.

However, I suspect the primary driver behind this trend might be cost reduction rather than environmental concern, given the widespread dissatisfaction with cloud bills. CloudZero notes that optimizing cloud spend can significantly reduce waste, lower energy consumption, and minimize carbon emissions, making green cloud computing potentially more cost-effective.

Edge Computing and the Quantum Leap

Back in 2019, Arpit Joshipura, then The Linux Foundation's general manager of networking, predicted that edge computing would surpass cloud computing by 2025. While that hasn't happened, the lines between edge and cloud are blurring, as Gartner observes. They're merging into a seamless computational fabric that supports real-time analytics and IoT applications needing ultra-low latency.

Bernard Marr, a futurist, has also noted this shift: "The artificial boundary between edge and cloud computing is disappearing, giving birth to a seamless computational fabric that's reshaping what's possible. Self-driving cars will make split-second decisions locally while leveraging cloud-based intelligence."

Despite the focus on edge computing, public cloud spending remains robust at an estimated $723 billion this year. As edge and cloud blend, distinguishing between them will become increasingly challenging.

Meanwhile, quantum computing is making its way from the lab to the cloud, with providers like IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon offering quantum capabilities as a service. While quantum computing remains far from mainstream use, its potential in fields like drug discovery and cybersecurity is exciting. Yet, we must remember that AI was once in a similar position, and look at where it is now.

Industry-Specific Clouds

Gartner predicts a rise in industry-specific cloud platforms, with over half of all organizations expected to use these by 2029. These platforms cater to the unique needs of sectors like healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and retail, helping businesses scale digital initiatives and tackle industry-specific challenges.

However, Gartner seems a bit late to the party here. Many industries are already heavily invested in vertical clouds tailored for their specific needs. For instance, if you're using 5G from providers like AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SK Telecom, Comcast, or Verizon, your data and voice services rely on OpenStack clouds behind the scenes.

Digital Sovereignty

Digital sovereignty is a concept that might not resonate much in the US, but it's a hot topic elsewhere. Countries, particularly in the UK and EU, are wary of US-based cloud services due to concerns over data protection and potential foreign government access.

As Gartner notes, "Organizations will be increasingly required to protect data, infrastructure, and critical workloads from control by external jurisdictions and foreign government access." They predict that over 50% of multinational organizations will adopt digital sovereign strategies by 2029, up from less than 10% today. From my recent visit to the UK, it's clear this trend is already accelerating. Hyundai, for instance, chose OpenStack for its car cloud to ensure control and security over its data.

The Rise of Supercloud and User-Centric Design

The term "supercloud" might sound like more tech jargon, but it's actually quite useful. A supercloud offers a single interface or control plane to manage resources, workloads, and data across multiple clouds, eliminating the need to navigate each cloud's unique interfaces and APIs.

Gartner believes this integration will become reality, though it's still a work in progress. Current supercloud initiatives like Snowflake Data Cloud, Databricks Lakehouse Platform, and Dell Project Alpine address parts of the multicloud challenge, but a comprehensive solution remains elusive.

Looking Ahead

Gartner's vision, backed by industry analysts and market data, suggests a future where the cloud ecosystem is smarter, greener, and more critical to business success than ever. As Joe Rogus stated, the "cloud will continue to unlock new business models, competitive advantages, and ways of achieving business missions."

The organizations that embrace these trends will be best positioned to thrive in a cloud-driven future. Those that fail to adapt risk falling behind in an increasingly tech-centric world.