Techstrong Research’s latest quarterly survey of 458 development professionals, managers, and senior leaders across 20 industries showed continued traction for The Alternative Cloud™ and growing interest in alternative cloud payment methods – especially among the study’s Gen Z respondents.
The report, commissioned by Linode (now Akamai), offers a number of insights around the need for cloud providers to support new payment methods accompanying a growing interest in alternative cloud suppliers.
While Amazon, Microsoft, and Google remain ubiquitous, nearly 75% of the surveyed respondents said they were currently using more than one cloud provider, a 20% increase from one year ago. According to Techstrong, 43% are considering adding one or more new cloud providers into their cloud mix over the next year.
What’s driving this? Those surveyed say increased vendor choice, the ability to reduce costs and complexity, and protection to minimize the impact of outages – and continued concern about competition from the large megascale providers, where respondents fear that cloud providers might copy their feature sets and value propositions.
The study also uncovered a rising interest in alternative cloud payment methods. According to Techstrong, more than half of the study’s respondents use credit cards to pay for cloud services, followed by formal contracts and RFPs. Alternative payments such as UPI, PayPal, Venmo, and cryptocurrencies, account for just over a third of payments. Leading the way among user segments embracing alternative payment forms: Gen Z. More than half of the study’s Gen Z respondents indicated a desire to pay for cloud services with an alternative payment mechanism.
What’s interesting is the overlap between The Alternative Cloud and alternative payments. 68% of respondents building on an alternative cloud provider are using alternative payment methods. By contrast, only 31% of The Big 3’s respondents are. According to Techstrong, one likely reason for the difference lies in the inherent flexibility of the smaller providers.
It wasn’t too many years ago that buying something online with a credit card was seen as a big deal. Revolutionary, in fact. If the trends in this latest Techstrong Research report continue to grow, we may be witnessing a new revolution in how developers and companies pay for the cloud.
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