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Managed cloud services are shifting from migration and infrastructure upkeep toward a broader operating challenge: coordinating AI workloads, hybrid estates, cloud costs, security, compliance and measurable business value. Flexera’s 2026 survey of 753 cloud decision-makers and users worldwide points to the pressures behind that shift; Gartner’s May 2025 figures are forecasts, not measured outcomes. The practical choice is not simply whether to use a cloud provider or managed service provider (MSP), but which capabilities to keep in-house, which to source, and how to hold both to clear outcomes.
What is changing in managed cloud services?
Cloud management increasingly spans several connected jobs: operating workloads across environments, governing AI use, controlling costs, meeting security and jurisdictional requirements, and showing what cloud investment delivers to the business. This is especially relevant as organizations run a mix of public cloud, private infrastructure and services accumulated through acquisitions or decentralized teams.
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Flexera’s 2026 State of the Cloud survey found that 73% of surveyed organizations operate hybrid cloud environments. That figure describes respondents to Flexera’s survey, not every organization. A mixed estate may be intentional, but it also means teams must coordinate identity, data, policies, cost reporting and operational responsibilities across environments.
How are AI workloads changing cloud operations?
AI is adding pressure to cloud capacity planning and governance. Gartner’s May 2025 announcement forecast that AI workloads would consume 50% of cloud compute resources by 2029, compared with less than 10% at the time of the announcement. This is a projection, not a current measurement. Flexera’s 2026 report also found that 58% of respondents use generative AI as a public cloud service, up from 50% in its 2025 report; 45% said they use it extensively, compared with 36% in 2025.
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Adoption creates operational work as well as opportunity. Among cloud leaders surveyed by Flexera in 2026, 53% named security and compliance as a top challenge for cloud-based AI initiatives, while 40% named training-data quality. These are reported concerns, not measures of actual incident rates or data quality across all businesses.
What teams need to govern
- Workload visibility: Identify where AI workloads run, which teams own them, and how resource use changes over time.
- Data readiness: Establish who is responsible for data quality, access and approved use before scaling workloads.
- Security and compliance: Set controls and accountability for the data and services involved, including any applicable jurisdictional requirements.
- Cost forecasting: Track AI-related consumption alongside other cloud services so forecasts and spending limits reflect actual usage patterns.
These are management requirements, not an argument that every organization should build its own AI platform or that AI automatically lowers operating costs.
How should organizations manage cloud spend?
Cloud cost management is a persistent operational concern: 85% of respondents in Flexera’s 2026 survey said managing cloud spend was a challenge. Flexera also reported that 63% had established FinOps teams, while 64% said cloud delivered value to business units. The figures suggest that cost accountability and business outcomes are increasingly linked rather than treated as separate conversations.
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FinOps is a shared practice across finance, engineering, procurement and product or business teams. Its purpose is not simply to cut bills; it is to make spending understandable and connect resource choices to service outcomes. Flexera reported that 49% of respondents used unit economics—such as cost per service—to connect cloud spending with outcomes, compared with 40% in its 2025 report.
Flexera estimated wasted IaaS and PaaS spending at 29% in its 2026 report, after five years of decline, and attributed the increase to cost complexity from AI and newer cloud services. This is an estimated survey finding, not a direct audit of every organization’s cloud bill.
Metrics that make cloud goals measurable
- Forecast accuracy: Compare projected spending with actual consumption and investigate material gaps.
- Unit cost: Track cost per service, transaction or other meaningful unit so teams can assess whether growth is improving or eroding efficiency.
- Utilization and avoidable waste: Identify resources that are idle, oversized or no longer needed, while considering service requirements.
- Business value: Connect cloud spending to business-unit outcomes rather than treating lower spend as success by itself.
Flexera’s 2025 release separately reported that 84% of respondents considered managing cloud spend a top challenge, that budgets exceeded limits by 17%, and that 59% had FinOps teams. These 2025 and 2026 figures come from separate releases; without checking the underlying methods and question wording, they should not be treated as directly comparable trends.
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Does multicloud make an organization more resilient?
Not by itself. Multiple providers can make sense for specific workload, resilience or regulatory requirements, but they add integration and operating work. Gartner’s May 2025 outlook identified interoperability as a multicloud challenge and recommended selecting specific use cases for cross-cloud deployment. Its forecast that more than 50% of organizations would fail to achieve their expected results from multicloud implementations by 2029 is a future projection, not a current failure rate.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsBefore placing a workload across providers, identify the reason for doing so and account for the dependencies that come with it: application compatibility, identity, data movement, security controls, monitoring, skills and cost governance. A second provider is not proof of resilience if the organization cannot operate the resulting design or recover from the failure it is meant to address.
How should buyers compare cloud providers?
Flexera’s 2026 survey found that 83% of respondents were running some or significant workloads on AWS and 79% on Azure. These are survey usage rates, not market shares, rankings of service quality or recommendations for an individual buyer. Flexera placed Google Cloud Platform third, but the reviewed report information did not provide an all-organization usage percentage. The survey indicates no clear near-term provider winner.
| Decision area | Question to ask |
|---|---|
| Workload fit | Can the provider support the application’s technical and performance requirements? |
| Interoperability and dependencies | What integration, migration and data-movement work will the choice create? |
| Security, compliance and sovereignty | Do the controls and jurisdictional arrangements fit the organization’s obligations? |
| Cost visibility | Can teams understand, forecast and connect consumption to unit economics? |
| Operating capability | Does the organization have the skills to run the environment, or a clearly accountable partner? |
| Portability and exit | What would it take to move workloads or end the relationship if needs change? |
The same questions help compare managed-service proposals: evaluate a provider’s relevant workload experience, security practices, incident responsibilities, cost transparency, service levels and exit terms. These criteria support due diligence; survey adoption figures do not establish the performance of any particular provider.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What should an organization expect from an MSP?
MSPs remain part of the cloud operating model, but buyer needs and provider offerings are evolving. Among SMBs that continue to use MSPs, Flexera’s 2026 report found that 65% sought security and compliance support, 64% sought cloud migration, and 58% sought FinOps. The report also said 49% of respondents expected providers to expand into AI consulting and strategy, while 44% of MSPs currently offered AI consulting. Flexera added that two-thirds of MSPs were adopting AI for cybersecurity use cases. These survey findings do not show how well any individual provider performs those services.
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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Responsibility should be explicit even when operations are outsourced. An MSP may operate systems or provide specialist services, but the customer still needs accountable owners for architecture, access decisions, risk acceptance and business outcomes.
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Set service boundaries before signing
- Specify which environments, workloads and tasks are covered—and what remains internal.
- Define who can approve access changes, architecture decisions and risk exceptions.
- Agree how incidents are detected, escalated and communicated, including each party’s responsibilities.
- Make cost reporting, service levels and performance measures understandable to both technical and business owners.
- Document portability, data handling and exit provisions so the organization knows how it can transition services.
MSP use varies by organization size in Flexera’s reporting. Its 2025 release said 60% of respondents used MSPs. The 2026 report described enterprise use as up 3 percentage points year over year, while SMB reliance declined from 48% to 39%; Flexera said budget constraints were a likely factor. These population-specific findings are not interchangeable with the 2025 all-respondent figure.
When do sovereignty, industry platforms and sustainability matter?
These considerations are especially relevant where law, customer commitments or business operations impose specific requirements. Gartner’s May 2025 release forecast that more than 50% of multinational organizations would have digital sovereignty strategies by 2029, compared with less than 10% at the time of publication. A “sovereign” label alone does not establish compliance: buyers need to check the applicable jurisdiction, data and operational controls, and who has access.
Gartner also forecast that more than 50% of organizations would use industry cloud platforms to accelerate business initiatives by 2029. That is a forecast, not an observed adoption rate. Flexera’s 2026 survey reported defined sustainability initiatives that included cloud carbon-footprint tracking at 47% of European respondents and 34% of North American respondents. Those regional survey figures do not compare emissions per workload or prove that moving to cloud reduces emissions.
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What are the top metrics for assessing progress against cloud goals?
Choose measures that match the goal and assign an owner to each. A cost program needs forecast and unit-cost measures; a resilience initiative needs measures tied to its recovery objectives; an AI program needs visibility into workload use, data readiness and governance. The useful test is whether a metric lets teams make a decision or correct a gap—not whether it is easy to put on a dashboard.
Gartner’s May 2025 announcement also forecast that 25% of organizations would have experienced significant dissatisfaction with cloud adoption by 2028. Like its multicloud and AI figures, this is a forecast, not a measured level of dissatisfaction today. For leaders, the actionable response is to define intended outcomes, ownership and review measures before adding services or providers.
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