It is one of the largest trends of this year, and now it has gotten affirmation from IDG: cloud initiatives are becoming ever-more complex as the technology hits full maturity.

The findings appear in the media and analyst firm’s ‘Cloud Insights’ report for 2018. The study, which polled 550 respondents – all of whom are involved in the cloud buying process to some extent – found almost one in three (30%) were using both multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies.

For those who have a multi-cloud approach, the simple fact of having more options was the biggest benefit, cited by 59% of those polled. Quicker and easier disaster recovery (40%), and increased flexibility through working across multiple clouds (38%) were also cited.

Naturally, more IT budget is being devoted to these projects. While spend in proportion to IT remains similar – 30% according to this study, compared with 28% for a similar study in 2016 – the monetary amount has gone up, from $1.62 million two years ago to $2.2m this year. For enterprises, the figure is around $3.5m, while for SMBs it is $889,000, up from $286,000 in 2016.

Of this spend, the CIO, or uppermost IT executive, holds most sway. 71% of those polled in such a position said they had ‘significant influence’, with the CTO further back on 54%.

It is interesting here to look back at how far the industry has come over the past several years. In 2011, when the question was asked over organisations’ plans with regard to utilising computing infrastructure or applications via the cloud, just over half (51%) said at least a part of their infrastructure was cloud-based, with 21% saying they planned to move within three years. Today, those figures have changed to 73% and 10% respectively.

While it’s an implicit note that not everything will be, or indeed can be, moved to the cloud – it was interesting to note the recent comments of Diane Bryant, late of Google, around how McDonald’s still has mainframes and is ‘not ashamed of it’ – the report studiously notes this progress.

Yet challenges still remain among buyers. Vendor lock-in is the primary concern, cited by 47% of those polled, while concerns around where data is stored (34%) and the general security of cloud computing solutions (34%) are also of concern.

“IT organisations are being asked to improve the speed of IT service delivery and react to changing market conditions. Cloud solutions provide the flexibility to do just that,” said Julie Ekstrom, SVP of IDG Communications. “Organisations are relying on a mix of cloud delivery models to meet this need; however it requires management of multiple vendors.

“As tech executives explore new areas of cloud investment, they examine their portfolio of cloud vendors to see what solutions can grow and what new vendors will work collaboratively with their existing portfolio for ease of adoption,” Ekstrom added.

You can find out more about the research here.