Tech executives at global organizations manage their public cloud environments by keeping into account many different factors worldwide, from different regulations to country-specific technology and business requirements. There are a few trends that are stable, though, as we found out in our research. Every year, we produce a series of reports that dive into cloud adoption data in different regions. We have published the first three reports in the 2024 series: The State Of Cloud In The US, 2024; The State Of Cloud In Canada, 2024; and The State Of Cloud In Europe, 2024. We will also publish six APAC-focused reports over the coming months that cover Australia and New Zealand, India, China, Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Each report also includes a map of the data centers in these regions from the global and regional cloud vendors.

Global Trends Have Their Own Local Peculiarities

The importance of cloud, together with the preponderance of global vendors in each local market, has recently cast new focus on digital sovereignty at global organizations in an attempt to reduce dependability on foreign legislations and grant autonomy and business continuity independent of the cloud vendors’ applicable jurisdiction. In 2024, the cloud continues to serve as the heart of major technology innovations, especially amid the age of AI. Cloud vendors are opening new data center regions to support their customers’ demand in the AI and generative AI space. As an example, Microsoft is set to invest €4.3 billion just in Italy to enhance its cloud and AI data center infrastructure. In addition to AI, companies are prioritizing FinOps to get more out of their cloud spend. Enterprises adopt FinOps for collaboration, accountability, and transparency on cloud spend — and this is gaining traction among tech executives, not just cloud leaders.

Here is a sampling of our findings from our recent research on cloud adoption:

• Digital sovereignty norms influence cloud choices in the US, Europe, and Canada in different ways. While enterprises in the US, Europe, and Canada say that they value digital sovereignty, the three markets are moving in different directions. More than half of US enterprises say digital sovereignty “completely” constrains their choice of cloud vendor, which is more than those in Canada and Europe, but the US federal government continues to take a laissez-faire approach to the cloud overall. The European Union and its member states have laws in place that refer to digital sovereignty and serve as models for non-European legislation in cloud and elsewhere. In 2024, the EU and its member states continued to promulgate cloud regulations that touch on areas around and beyond data residency, such as France’s SREN Law, which aims to make the cloud market more competitive. Meanwhile, Canada loosened its data residency laws. For example, British Columbia’s Freedom Of Information And Protection Of Privacy Regulation and Quebec’s Privacy Legislation Modernization Act ignored the question of digital sovereignty.
• AI is driving cloud adoption and talent hiring in North America and Europe. Enterprises in both North America and Europe are hiring and retraining their staff so they can better utilize AI. For example, some US enterprise cloud decision-makers in 2024 are either hiring new staff (24%) or retraining existing staff (25%) for AI and machine learning (ML). The National Hockey League uses cloud-based AI/ML to track player performance and the likelihood of players scoring goals. Vodafone used Google Cloud to build a unified AI platform, giving its data scientists prebuilt pipelines, standardized tools, and automated deployments to cut the amount of time it takes to move from proof of concept to production-ready AI solutions. This platform allowed Vodafone to reduce its AI development time from proof of concept to production from 20 to two weeks.
• FinOps is a priority in North America and Europe to optimize costs and cloud usage. Many enterprises are adopting FinOps to optimize their own cloud usage: 68% of North American enterprise cloud decision-makers and 56% of European enterprise cloud decision-makers have their own FinOps practices. Enterprises such as Software Solutions Integrated (SSI) and Siemens Mobility Services use cloud cost management and optimization tools — Virtana Optimize and CloudCheckr, respectively — to optimize their cloud spend.

To help you navigate the cloud markets in each of these regions and beyond, here are a few steps that you can take:

1. If you are a Forrester client and want to learn more about this topic, please schedule a guidance session with me, Dario Maisto, senior analyst.
2. Explore the links to related research included below.
3. Not a Forrester client? Please contact the Forrester account team.

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