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Where does the cloud go from here? For many companies, that's a multi-billion-dollar question. One set of answers comes from tech analyst Gartner's latest papers, The Future of Cloud in 2029: The Journey From Technology to Business Necessity and Predicts 2025: Challenges Shaping the Future of Cloud Adoption.
At its IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies conference in Sydney, Australia, Gartner also suggested eight key trends for the cloud through 2029: cloud dissatisfaction, AI/machine learning (ML), multicloud, sustainability, digital sovereignty, supercloud, edge computing, and industry-specific solutions.
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In his keynote speech at the conference, Joe Rogus, Gartner advisory director, said: "These trends are accelerating the shift in how cloud is transforming from a technology enabler to a business disruptor and necessity for most organizations. Over the next few years, cloud will continue to unlock new business models, competitive advantages, and ways of achieving business missions."
That's a pretty generic comment. It also strikes me as being behind the times. I've been following the cloud since day one, and I'd say the cloud has been a business disruptor for over a decade.
Just look, for example, at the 800-pound giant of the cloud: Amazon Web Services (AWS). Only two years after its 2006 founding, ZDNET's Larry Dignan, predicted that Amazon's cloud business would prove far more profitable than its retail offerings. Today, AWS, while providing only about 17% of Amazon's total revenue, is the company's most profitable segment.
According to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) company Spacelift, 96% of all companies are now using the public cloud to carry at least some of their workload. At the same time, the 2024 CDW Cloud Computing Research Report stated that 45% of organizations have already shifted at least half of their applications onto public clouds. Looking ahead, 35% of those remaining said they'll move at least half of those applications to the cloud within three years.
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The disruption is here, and it's been here for a while now. Just look at Microsoft. Many people think the company makes most of its money from Windows and Office. However, in 2024, 62% of its revenue came from cloud services. Windows accounted for just 10%. That split explains why Microsoft is investing so much money in Linux.
Let's dig into Gartner's trends and see where that takes us.
1. Cloud dissatisfaction: A growing challenge
Despite widespread adoption, many people are unhappy with their clouds, especially their cost. Gartner predicts that by 2028, a quarter of organizations will experience significant dissatisfaction with their cloud investments, often due to unrealistic expectations, suboptimal implementation, or spiraling costs.
Based on my many conversations with experts at cloud trade shows, I think many, perhaps most, businesses are already unhappy with cloud bills. It's a common complaint.
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According to CloudZero's 2024 State of Cloud Cost Intelligence Report, only four in 10 organizations have their cloud costs where they expect them to be. That result means about 60% of organizations find their cloud costs higher than anticipated, with 49% saying costs were "a little higher than they should be" and 11% reporting that costs were "way too high."
It's telling that Harness, an AI software delivery company, found in its annual survey report, FinOps in Focus 2025, that it expects businesses to waste $44.5 billion on the cloud in 2025. Gartner, by the way, estimates the industry will spend $723.4 billion on the cloud this year. That's a lot of money and a lot of waste.
2. AI and ML: The new cloud workload
Guess what? Businesses will spend a lot more on the cloud soon. Gartner and pretty much everyone else predict we'll be building out AI, and that doesn't come cheap. Indeed, Gartner predicts that by 2029, half of all cloud compute resources will be devoted to AI workloads, up from less than 10% today.
On the other hand, IDC estimates that by 2025, 75% of businesses will leverage AI-driven cloud services, so Gartner may be underestimating how quickly organizations will swing to cloud-driven AI services. However, another question is whether the money spent on AI cloud will be worth it. I have my doubts.
3. Multicloud and hybrid strategies: Flexibility over lock-in
The days of relying on a single cloud provider are fading. Gartner noted a surge in multicloud adoption, with organizations blending private and public cloud resources to avoid vendor lock-in and optimize for cost, performance, and resilience. By the end of 2025, Gartner expects over 85% of organizations to use hybrid or multicloud strategies.
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Indeed, we're already almost there. Most businesses -- even my mini business, Vaughan-Nichols & Associates -- use more than one cloud. A hybrid cloud, by the way, is one where you run workloads across both private (on-premises) and public cloud environments, usually using orchestration tools such as Kubernetes to manage and deploy applications across different infrastructures. A multicloud is just one where you use two or more clouds for services. For example, Microsoft 365 is used for your office software, and Google Drive is used for your personal file storage.
According to Fortinet's 2025 State of Cloud Security Report, more than 78% of organizations already use two or more cloud providers. Statista, the business data company, agrees. In 2024, Statista declared that more than 70% of firms use two or more cloud providers.
4. Sustainable solutions: The green cloud
Gartner believes the green cloud is no longer a peripheral concern. The analyst highlighted the rise of green cloud initiatives as providers and users face mounting pressure to reduce their environmental impact. Cloud giants like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are investing in renewable energy and carbon-neutral data centers.
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However, I strongly suspect that what drives this trend is not concern for the environment, but cutting costs. Remember, many cloud customers are not happy with their bills. Green cloud computing can also be cheap cloud computing. As CloudZero, a cloud cost optimizer, observed: "By optimizing cloud spend, companies can significantly reduce waste, lower energy consumption, and, thus, minimize their carbon emissions."
5. Edge computing and the quantum leap
In 2019, Arpit Joshipura, then The Linux Foundation's general manager of networking, told me that "edge computing will overtake cloud computing" by 2025. He wasn't right, but he wasn't far wrong either. Edge and cloud computing, as Gartner observed, are merging. They're creating a seamless computational fabric, enabling real-time analytics and IoT applications that demand ultra-low latency.
Others have pointed to this blurring, too. Bernard Marr, a well-regarded futurist, recently observed: "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."
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Public cloud computing continues to be crucial, with spending estimated at $723bn this year. Again, though, as the two blend together, it will be harder to tell the line between edge and cloud.
Meanwhile, quantum computing is emerging from the lab and entering the cloud, with providers like IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon making quantum capabilities accessible as a service, unlocking new possibilities in fields from drug discovery to cybersecurity. But let's get real. Quantum computing is still a long, long way from being something anyone uses in production. Of course, you could have said that in 2020, too, about AI, and look at us now?
6. Industry-specific clouds
Gartner also predicts that more and more organizations will turn to industry-specific cloud platforms. The analyst firm projects that by 2029, more than half of all organizations will leverage these specialized cloud solutions to accelerate their business initiatives.
Industry cloud platforms offer tailored capabilities designed to address the unique needs of vertical sectors such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and retail. Vendors are increasingly rolling out solutions beyond generic cloud services, enabling companies to scale digital initiatives and respond more effectively to industry-specific challenges.
This is a case where Gartner, it seems to me, is behind the curve. Many industries are already locked into vertical clouds built solely for their use. For example, if your phone uses 5G from AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SK Telecom, Comcast, or Verizon, your data and voice depend on OpenStack clouds behind the scenes.
7. Digital sovereignty
If you're living in the US, chances are you don't even know what digital sovereignty is all about. Outside the US, it's a different story. Many countries, especially in the UK and the EU, don't trust US-based cloud services. They fear, with reason, that their data might not be adequately protected.
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Our current government hasn't been making friends overseas lately. As Gartner put it, "Organizations will be increasingly required to protect data, infrastructure, and critical workloads from control by external jurisdictions and foreign government access. Gartner predicts over 50% of multinational organizations will have digital sovereign strategies by 2029, up from less than 10% today."
I think it will happen even faster than that. I spent a month in the UK earlier this year, and everyone in the cloud business talked about this. It's not just across the Atlantic. Late last year, Younghold Han, Hyundai's VP of car cloud, told me that Hyundai chose OpenStack because it gave them the control and security they needed to feel their data was adequately protected.
8. The rise of supercloud and user-centric design
Warning: More technical jargon is coming. However, supercloud does at least describe something useful. A supercloud provides a single interface or control plane for managing resources, workloads, and data across all participating clouds. That way, you don't need to learn each cloud's unique front ends and application programming interfaces (API).
As you might imagine, this integration isn't easy. Gartner believes it will happen, though. So far, supercloud programs, such as Snowflake Data Cloud, Databricks Lakehouse Platform, and Dell Project Alpine, can deal with parts of the problem for multiclouds, but no one's licked the problem yet.
Looking ahead
Gartner's outlook, reinforced by industry analysts and market data, paints a picture of a cloud ecosystem that is smarter, greener, and more integral to business success than ever before. As Rogus said, the "cloud will continue to unlock new business models, competitive advantages, and ways of achieving business missions."
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The organizations that adapt to these trends will be best positioned to thrive in the cloud-driven future. Those that lag will fall behind in an increasingly cloud-tech-centric world.
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