Use of IaC (such as Terraform, Pulumi, and OpenTofu) is becoming a de facto standard. This report identifies the drivers, common approaches, and outcomes behind its use.

The start of a potential changing of the guard in IaC tools is here, even as Terraform retains market share. The majority of IaC users in the survey still leverage Terraform, but cracks in that dominance are appearing.

As many as 65% of respondents report cloud complexity over the last two years is trending up. Another 27% feel it’s still just as difficult as it was two years ago. 

Cloud engineers recognize IaC’s value, and find that the benefits they expect from using IaC are being realized, but only 6% of respondents have reached full cloud codification.

Drift emerged as a hot topic in 2025, after being relatively underemphasized in 2024. Today, less than one-third of organizations continuously monitor drift; the rest are largely reactive, addressing drift only when it causes a problem.

In the face of rising complexity, manual ways of working remains a problem. This has led to a shift in how practitioners work, and especially in how they approach new infrastructure deployment. Unsurprisingly, automation-first pipelines have become the gold standard.

Though not yet ubiquitous, AI is making inroads into cloud infrastructure management. And even in early adoption phases, cloud practitioners largely recognize the potential AI holds. Those investing early will be poised to gain a competitive edge.