AI is poised to accelerate the divide between mature cloud organizations and those struggling to manage their hybrid infrastructure environments.
Overall, 97% of organizations worldwide encounter issues managing their cloud infrastructure, according to the 2025 Cloud Complexity Report, which surveyed over 1,000 global IT, DevOps, platform, and software engineering decision makers. And more than half (52%) rank hybrid cloud complexity as the top challenge.
But a majority of “transformative” organizations (56%) now plan to use AI to improve cloud success, compared to just 46% of “tactical” organizations. As these businesses harness the power of automation to deliver continual optimization across all their cloud environments, they’re able to drive innovation at speed without jeopardizing security, turning infrastructure into a competitive advantage.
Meanwhile, those in the tactical stage are still heavily-reliant on manual processes. IT environments are siloed, as are the platform and security teams responsible for managing the cloud infrastructure. They take a reactive, inconsistent approach to solving problems that undermines efficiency and security, and ultimately, infrastructure operations aren’t aligned to broader business goals.
With AI ramping up the stakes, tactical companies need to act now to get control of their infrastructure. Here’s how.
»What’s the focus for transformative organizations?
Executives at transformative organizations are already aligned on the company’s cloud strategy. And now, they’re focused on infusing AI into the core of operations.
There’s governance and accountability across teams, as well as a broad understanding of foundational security practices and a united focus on upskilling employees on the latest innovations. Processes and policies span all cloud environments. And instead of spending time on routine, highly-manual tasks, the platform team is focused on continually optimizing cost, security, and performance.
According to the 2025 Cloud Complexity Report survey results, transformative organizations are:
- Making security a continuous and automated part of software development (59%)
- Developing AI/ML skills for optimizing cloud cost security, and performance (58%)
- Establishing team ownership of AI workloads in the cloud (52%)
- Getting executive alignment on AI strategy (50%)
»How can tactical businesses mature?
For tactical businesses, it’s not just about getting the cloud under control. Until they can manage their hybrid infrastructure, these organizations can’t effectively prioritize AI. They risk falling behind those companies that are able to quickly advance AI-driven automation.
To get control of their cloud infrastructure and security, tactical enterprises should:
- Implement infrastructure as code (IaC) best practices: IaC helps to speed up provisioning. Developers can access pre-designed templates, which speed up the development lifecycle, deliver uniform security policies, and control resource usage
- Make security and compliance a collaborative, multi-cloud affair: According to the survey results, 73% of platform and security teams work as siloed functions. This slows down innovation, and makes it harder to sustain a unified security framework across the growing number of cloud and AI workloads. Instead, when the two teams work in parallel, it leads to greater compliance and audit readiness, as well as fewer security incidents.
- Align executives and internal teams: The cloud is no longer just the job of the platform team. Everyone in the business must be accountable for helping to maintain the infrastructure. This can range from understanding common security policies like zero trust, to working with other executives to align the cloud strategy to business goals. Once this foundation is established, organizations can begin to build on their AI plan.
»The platform matters
Often, a key difference between transformative and tactical organizations is the use of a unified lifecycle management platform. These systems accelerate provisioning speeds and improve collaboration between internal teams, as well as integrate security and compliance processes directly into development workflows.
Read the full 2025 HashiCorp Cloud Complexity report for even more insights into the divide between tactical and transformative organizations.
