Cloud adoption isn’t all it’s cut out to be as enterprises report growing dissatisfaction

While cloud adoption continues apace, new research from Gartner suggests a significant portion of enterprises will experience ‘dissatisfaction’ in their journey in the coming years.

Analysis from the consultancy predicts 25% of organizations will experience frustration in cloud adoption projects by 2028, with a host of major hurdles causing problems.

Among these are unrealistic expectations of what the cloud can deliver, according to Gartner, as well as issues relating to poor implementation and rising costs.

“To remain competitive, companies need a clear cloud strategy and effective execution,” the consultancy said. “Gartner research indicates that those that have successfully addressed upfront strategic focus by 2029 will find their cloud dissatisfaction will decrease.”

Missed expectations in particular have been a major pain point for enterprises in recent years. Indeed, research from IDC in late 2024 noted that the growing ‘cloud repatriation’ trend had been driven by lackluster results.

Cloud repatriation entered the corporate lexicon in early 2023 when 37 Signals - the SaaS firm behind Basecamp - revealed plans to move back on-prem and save money due to rising cloud costs.

The project has since paid dividends for the company, with CTO David Heinemeier Hansson claiming the firm saved over $1 million within a matter of months.

Cloud costs have also been a recurring concern among adopters over the last two and a half years, with prices skyrocketing in late 2022. Alternative research aligning with Gartner’s shows cloud implementation and management failures have been a leading factor behind rising costs.

Research from Boomi in association with Forrester in mid-2024 showed many companies were slow to introduce cost remediation tactics, for example, or lacked a clear understanding of their own infrastructure.

This has a domino effect on the enterprise, the study found, and exacerbates wasteful spending. Statistics from the study showed nearly three-quarters (72%) of respondents exceeded their cloud budgets in the fiscal year running 2023-2024.

Firms can’t afford to botch cloud adoption in the age of AI

Enterprises flocking to the cloud are doing so at a critical time, according to Gartner.

AI and machine learning-related demands are expected to surge in the coming years, the study found, meaning organizations simply can’t afford to botch adoption strategies.

The consultancy predicts that 50% of cloud compute resources will be devoted to AI workloads by 2019, marking a huge increase from less than 10% in May 2025.

“This all points to a fivefold increase in AI-related cloud workloads by 2029,” said Joe Rogus, director of advisory at Gartner.

“Now is the time for organizations to assess whether their data centers and cloud strategies are ready to handle this surge in AI and ML demand. In many cases, they might need to bring AI to where the data is to support this growth.”

Multi-cloud challenges continue

The rise of generative AI has run in parallel with heightened interest in hybrid and multi-cloud options for enterprises, with many flocking to the latter due to the flexibility of working with multiple providers.

This too has its problems, however, and Gartner found many enterprises are encountering sizable hurdles, such problems with interoperability and poor overall results, which are contributing to the air of growing dissatisfaction.

“Many organizations that have adopted multi-cloud architecture find connecting to and between providers a challenge,” the consultancy said.

“This lack of interoperability between environments can slow cloud adoption, with Gartner predicting more than 50% of organisations will not get the expected results from their multi-cloud implementations by 2029.”

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