Five takeaways from the Unisys Cloud Insights Report

Approximately 76% of organizations plan to increase their cloud investment in 2025, according to our survey of business and technology executives. But is their infrastructure ready for advanced technologies like agentic AI and post-quantum security?  

We surveyed more than 1,000 business and IT decision-makers in eight global markets, the US, UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain and Italy, to find out. Our “From Complexity to Clarity: Modernizing Cloud and IT for What Comes Next” report explores how they select cloud and IT infrastructure capabilities and how prepared they are for new and emerging technologies. We discovered that many struggle with complex infrastructures and data management tools, creating a disconnect between their technology ambitions and their ability to support them.   

Here are five key takeaways from our research to spark conversations within your organization about technology investments. These insights can help encourage momentum toward better alignment between innovation goals and infrastructure capabilities.  

#1: Innovation Leaders prioritize industry cloud platforms 

Our survey led us to identify a group of 103 respondents (10% of the sample) who strive to harness technology’s power to propel their innovation. We categorized respondents as Innovation Leaders if they: 

• Believe innovation is a driver behind cloud strategy 
• Consider their cloud security approach a means to greater innovation 
• View cloud and IT as profit centers rather than cost centers 
• Outperform expectations with innovation metrics during a 12-month period 

Innovation Leaders excel over leaders at mainstream companies at just about every business metric, including total sales and revenue, gross profit, operational efficiency, innovation and automation. Organizations helmed by Innovation Leaders average the same number of cloud platforms as others, but they prioritize the best architecture for each use case. Industry cloud platforms, for instance, are tailored to address the requirements and needs of a specific sector, providing specialized compliance standards, applications and services. 

#2: Complexity is stalling organizations' cloud modernization  

Our survey reveals that the most successful strategy for freeing up technology budgets is to decrease infrastructure complexity. Organizations recognize that they need to modernize their cloud environment to spark innovation, but ecosystem complexity is stalling those plans.  

While Innovation Leaders do a better job of choosing the right architecture for each use case, all surveyed organizations have an average of seven distinct cloud platforms or environments. Those sprawling ecosystems drain budgets that could advance business initiatives. However, business executives (37%) believe more strongly than technology executives (25%) that reducing infrastructure complexity, such as optimizing service locations or consolidating cloud services, is their top IT infrastructure priority.  

Another strategy for minimizing complexity is to rebalance systems to on-premises or private cloud systems, which Innovation Leaders consider the third most important way to free up budget for tech investment. Embracing a hybrid cloud approach can reduce costs, improve performance and enhance security and compliance. These companies often choose public cloud for agility and scalability and on-premises systems for sensitive data protection.  

#3: Generative AI requires stricter data practices 

High-quality data powers generative AI models, but bad data sabotages your technology investments. Organizations need to implement stricter data practices to ensure their data is reliable. That takes stronger data management practices to optimize AI use, and 73% of survey respondents tell us they're committing a significant portion of their IT budgets to this initiative.  

When ranking the measures most likely to receive budget in the next 12 months, Innovation Leaders chose enhancing data management capabilities as their second priority. However, only 36% of organizations believe their existing architecture and tools are sufficient to support large data volumes and data-driven decision-making.  

#4: Cybersecurity is moving from reactive to proactive 

A whopping 85% of organizations have a reactive cybersecurity posture and respond to incidents only after they occur. Legacy infrastructure and reactive cybersecurity put organizations at risk, and the financial implications of security incidents can be significant. About 41% of respondents told us that each hour of unplanned IT downtime costs between $100,000 and $500,000.  

However, more organizations are prioritizing proactive security strategies, such as 62% telling us they have implemented or are in the process of adopting a Zero Trust approach to data and system access. Other proactive strategies they have taken action on include cyber recovery (61%), managed detection and response (45%), continuous threat exposure management (43%), AI-driven security orchestration (43%), automation and response (43%) and digital identity and access management (42%). 

Business and technology executives differ on data security. While 63% of business executives say outdated or rigid data security limits their ability to tap data’s full potential, just 35% of technology executives believe that.  

#5: Agentic AI use is accelerating 

Approximately 73% of business executives believe they need to adopt agentic AI to stay competitive, and 94% expect to use agentic AI agents by 2027. Unfortunately, almost half (43%) of IT executives don’t have the IT foundation necessary for implementation. Other potential roadblocks include: 

• Numerous agentic AI technologies and disagreement among IT executives on the best choice for their needs 
• Strong hype around agentic AI but insufficient business executive understanding of its promise 
• Employee fears that agentic AI will replace them and take their jobs 

The healthcare and life sciences industries have made the most strides toward agentic AI adoption. Overcoming roadblocks can benefit many others by addressing the skilled employee shortage, personalizing customer interactions, automating security and optimizing pricing and revenue.  

Get the complete picture 

Discover how your technology strategy compares with 1,000 global executives navigating the same infrastructure and innovation challenges. Download the report to benchmark your approach.