Why Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) — and Why Now?

Thanks to IaC, the days of provisioning your cloud infrastructure with tedious, manual processes have been replaced with ones where they’re streamlined through automation. Today, we’ve largely moved away from unnecessary human error in the way teams build, configure, manage, and maintain their cloud infrastructure. And over time, IaC has proven it makes DevOps work more efficient, compliant, and risk-free — even in the face of increasing cloud complexity and still-immature cloud governance.

But in a recent survey of 350 IT professionals conducted by Firefly —a cloud asset management provider for DevOps and Platform engineering teams— findings revealed that, once again, change is afoot. And IaC is key to adapting to it all with ease.

Here are the most impactful findings from the 2024 State of Infrastructure-as-Code Report. 

The Make-or-Break Factors Driving Change in IaC

In 2024, cloud engineering teams are looking for tools that make it easier to centralize the management of multiple computing platforms. And this trend is only poised to accelerate as multi-cloud complexity continues to grow. 

In fact, among survey respondents, over 50% have 10+ cloud accounts, while another quarter have over 100 cloud accounts, and 12% have over 500.

And although the multi-cloud approach is a great way to simplify environments for a project or department, it ultimately makes it more difficult for an organization to manage visibility, best practices, and policy enforcement.

Among the other top challenges teams are facing when it comes to IaC in the wake of multi-cloud popularity? Security, knowledge gaps, and governance issues. 

And they’re only compounded by the disruptors catalyzing today’s IaC evolution: 

1. The Beginning of the End of Terraform?

Data from the 2024 State of Infrastructure-as-Code Report reveals that we’re seeing a significant change in IaC tool preferences. Following Terraform’s shift away from an open source model —a move that 30% of respondents described as disruptive— more and more teams plan to move away from Terraform and toward tools like Crossplane, Pulumi, OpenTofu, or Arm/Bicep.

Many use two or more (and as many as six) IaC frameworks. Meanwhile, nearly 60% are using existing DevOps pipelines to deploy IaC. 

And they’re doing it all in pursuit of consistency and velocity, as well as improved reliability and security. 

2. The Impact of AI is Already Apparent

As businesses scale and release cycles speed up, more assets are constantly added to their cloud environments. This makes keeping assets codified an ongoing maintenance effort, especially considering the need to take both new and legacy cloud assets into account. 

Promisingly, this year, 13% of survey respondents reported their cloud has been fully codified into IaC: 3x the number of respondents who reported so just a year ago. 

Yet for the 32% who only use IaC for new infrastructure, and the 55% who have only retrofitted their existing cloud with IaC, there’s room for improvement — and a more comprehensive approach. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) stands to be a key solution in 2024 and beyond.

In fact, AI code generation has already affected IaC adoption and practices, and will continue to: a reprieve from inefficient ways of working for the many organizations who still have multiple engineers per month writing IaC themselves.‍

3. Cloud Governance is Lacking — And At Times Nonexistent 

When it comes to IaC, what does the state of cloud governance look like? In short: cloud governance is immature, drift detection has improved, and remediation has not.

Without proper governance over changes made to your cloud configuration, it’s impossible to ensure that the IaC and its underlying configuration remain in sync. But detecting this drift problem isn’t easy. And remediation is, for some, not happening at all.

Over the last year, many have adopted dedicated tools to detect configuration drift. Nonetheless, as many as 20% of survey respondents report that they can’t detect drift. And most others aren’t able to do so until their organization has been exposed to (and vulnerable as a result of) unauthorized changes for days or even weeks. 

When it comes to drift remediation, fewer than half can do so within 24 hours. Even more worryingly, 13% do not fix the issue at all. 

Governance remains one of the top challenges, as well as one of the top objectives, of using IaC. But choosing not to address these challenges due to their complexity could have major implications for more passive teams’ IaC strategy.  This is especially true for teams not well-versed in IaC, who don’t invest in bridging that knowledge gap — and soon. 

What’s Next in IaC, and How Can Cloud Engineering Teams Get Prepared?

The 2024 State of Infrastructure-as-Code Report offers cloud engineers a snapshot of how organizations are managing their cloud infrastructure resources, and a way to benchmark against their peers. (Our team releases fresh research and a new report every year, so check back in with us or follow Firefly on LinkedIn for the latest updates when we unveil next year’s trends!)

Explore the 2024 research report in full to learn what will push IaC along its expected growth trajectory to $2.3B by 2027.