More than half of UK IT leaders lack visibility into their cloud spend, making ROI measurement impossible even as hybrid cloud adoption continues to ramp up, according to fresh research from Ekco.

The cloud service providers’ latest Infrastructure Modernisation Survey reveals that 54% of businesses cannot effectively track their cloud spending, potentially undermining billions in infrastructure investment.

That lack of visibility is not slowing firms down, with the study finding that hybrid cloud adoption has jumped to 68%, up from 58% in 2022, with 88% of organisations having either completed or actively engaged in cloud infrastructure initiatives.

The majority of firms (70%) agreed that moving to the cloud from on-premises infrastructure could save them money, while 82% said cloud environments would create more agile organisational structures, and 76% feel cloud setups are more optimised for success.

Ekco found that these kinds of benefits have driven 98% of organisations not already moving to the cloud to consider migrating.

However, despite IT leaders’ enthusiasm for the cloud, Ekco’s research, which polled over 1,000 IT decision-makers across the UK and Ireland, found that only one-third (33%) of cloud projects deliver on every goal.

Roadblocks include a severe lack of skills, with only a quarter (27%) of IT leaders feeling that they have the right internal expertise to fully harness cloud technologies, while almost half (46%) cited management failing to prioritise cloud migration.

Legacy infrastructure also continues to be a major drag on innovation, with 71% of organisations reporting that outdated technology is actively holding them back. 

Cybersecurity is presenting the biggest challenge, though, as 81% of decision-makers are concerned about the resilience of their current cloud infrastructure, leading more than a third of IT leaders to admit their cloud security setups need improvement.       

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According to the report, these issues are creating a gap between partial and complete success that is costing organisations considerably, and leaving many struggling to measure true return on investment.

“Organisations are making substantial cloud investments, but without proper cost visibility and optimisation, they’re essentially flying blind,” said  James Young, head of technical solution architecture at Ekco.

“The jump to 68% hybrid adoption shows businesses want more control and governance, but that comes with complexity – a challenge that lends itself to a ‘FinOps’ approach, bringing together internal engineering, finance and business teams to ensure smarter, and more accountable cloud spending.”

Ekco’s research adds to the litany of studies that provide evidence of a major shift towards cloud solutions. 

For example, last month, new data from GTT Communications found that more than half of enterprise firms expect to spend more than $10 million (£7.3m) this year on private cloud technology, with more than half of AI workloads already residing in a combination of private cloud and on-premises environments.

AI has become a driving force behind this race to the cloud, with a report by Wipro earlier this year revealing that 90% of enterprises now use cloud infrastructure to power their AI initiatives.