HashiCorp, the provider of multi-cloud infrastructure automation software, has released its 2023 State of Cloud Strategy Survey, showing positive business outcomes for Asia Pacific (APAC) organisations that demonstrate high maturity in adopting, standardising, and scaling their multi-cloud adoption.

This year's survey, commissioned by HashiCorp and performed by Forrester Consulting, focuses on operational cloud maturity, defined by the adoption of a combination of technological and organisational best practices at scale.

Results highlighted that high-maturity organisations benefit most in the areas of security, governance, reliability, and cost. Organisations also reported their most common multi-cloud barrier was a shortage of cloud skills, indicating that attracting, nurturing, and retaining engineering talent remains an industry-wide challenge.

Key APAC findings include:

• 55% of respondents boosted cloud spending in the last year: Despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment, over half of respondents continue to increase investment in cloud spending. Nearly all report opportunities to optimise that spend, and over half of mature organisations say their multi-cloud strategy is actually helping them save money. 93% of high cloud maturity organisations say multi-cloud is working: 70% of overall respondents say multi-cloud is helping them reach business goals, and an additional 16% say they expect it to in the next year. 
• Skills shortages ranked as the top multi-cloud barrier: Respondents of all maturity levels noted that the lack of skilled cloud talent is the most common issue, hindering companies ability to operationalise multi-cloud. Mature organisations have a key advantage, however, with 71% saying their multi-cloud strategy helps them attract, motivate, and retain talent. 
• Security ranked as the top multi-cloud benefit: Among respondents, security is ranked the top factor in multi-cloud success and the most common benefit from a multi-cloud strategy. While multi-cloud clearly can create security challenges, working in multiple cloud environments can also help organisations keep their security professionals engaged, and also be a forcing function toward more intentional oversight of their security operations.
• 100% of high-maturity organisations rely on platform teams: Platform teams are clearly becoming an essential component of the enterprise cloud-adoption journey. In fact, every high-maturity respondent across the entire global survey said their organisation uses platform teams. And 95% of all APAC respondents rely on platform teams.

Armon Dadgar, Co-founder and CTO, HashiCorp, says, "This year's State of Cloud Strategy Survey showed meaningful differences between high-maturity organisations further in their cloud journeys and low-maturity organisations that have yet to standardise.

"While low-maturity organisations face difficulties in staffing, security, and costs, high-maturity organisations are able to use their multi-cloud approach to attract and retain talent, implement platform teams, save money, and improve security. The data confirm that as organisations progress along their cloud adoption journey, they realise important benefits that improve both technical and business outcomes."