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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Gartner forecast in May 2025 that 25% of organizations will have experienced significant dissatisfaction with cloud adoption by 2028. That is a projection—not a count of organizations already unhappy—and Gartner attributes the risk to unrealistic expectations, suboptimal implementation and/or uncontrolled costs. The forecast points to execution and governance problems, not a conclusion that cloud is inherently a poor choice.
What Gartner forecast—and what it did not
In a May 13, 2025 press release, Gartner said 25% of organizations will have experienced significant dissatisfaction with cloud adoption by 2028. The stated causes are unrealistic expectations, suboptimal implementation and/or uncontrolled costs. The forecast does not say that 25% are dissatisfied now, nor that cloud adoption generally fails. Gartner’s forecast is the source for this projection.
A separate Gartner projection says more than 50% of organizations will not get the expected results from multicloud implementations by 2029. Gartner identifies interoperability between environments as a challenge; it does not predict that every multicloud deployment will fail. The two forecasts describe different outcomes: significant dissatisfaction with cloud adoption overall, and unmet expectations specifically from multicloud implementations.
Why cloud plans can disappoint
Expectations and scope
A cloud project can miss its mark if the expected benefits are not realistic or if the implementation is judged against goals that were never clearly defined. The forecast names unrealistic expectations, but does not quantify how much each cause contributes. For an organization evaluating its own strategy, the practical question is whether the intended outcomes, project scope and measures of success align.
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Implementation and cost governance
Moving workloads to cloud does not by itself guarantee good implementation or controlled spending. Gartner includes suboptimal implementation and uncontrolled costs among the possible drivers of dissatisfaction. In a separate commissioned study, Forrester Consulting found that 72% of surveyed global companies exceeded their set cloud budgets in the last fiscal year. Boomi commissioned the study in December 2023 and published the finding on April 2, 2024; it is a study result, not a claim that 72% of all businesses overspend. The release also points to late cost-remediation tactics and incomplete visibility of infrastructure as issues. Boomi’s announcement of the Forrester Consulting study provides the study context.
Interoperability across providers
Multicloud can introduce complexity when systems and services need to connect across providers. Gartner’s statement, quoted in ITPro’s May 15, 2025 coverage, was: “Many organizations that have adopted multi-cloud architecture find connecting to and between providers a challenge.” This is a reported challenge, not evidence that using multiple providers is always unsuccessful. It does help explain why a multicloud strategy needs a clear reason for each environment and a plan for how they will work together. ITPro’s coverage attributes the statement to Gartner without naming an individual speaker.
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AI workloads add a planning pressure
Gartner also forecast that 50% of cloud compute resources will be devoted to AI workloads by 2029, up from less than 10% at the time of the May 2025 release. Gartner’s Joe Rogus described this as “a fivefold increase in AI-related cloud workloads by 2029.” This is a forecast about the share of cloud compute resources, not a measured share today. ITPro’s article appears to print “2019” once; Gartner’s release gives 2029, consistent with the adjacent 2029 forecast. Organizations planning infrastructure should therefore treat AI demand as a capacity-planning consideration, not as a reason by itself to adopt or reject cloud.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Questions to use when reviewing a cloud strategy
- Are the expected benefits specific and realistic? Set measurable outcomes and define project scope before treating cloud adoption as successful or unsuccessful.
- Can implementation quality and spending be monitored? Check whether teams can see infrastructure use and respond to emerging cost issues in time.
- Do multiple environments interoperate as intended? Identify how workloads, data and services will connect across providers, and whether the complexity serves a clear purpose.
- Does capacity planning account for AI demand? Consider whether projected workloads could affect the infrastructure required and the assumptions behind the cloud plan.
The figures come from different kinds of evidence and should not be added together: Gartner’s 2028 and 2029 figures are forecasts, while the 72% budget figure is a finding from a commissioned study. Each concerns a different measure, population or time frame.
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