Welcome to the 2026 Cloud Forum!

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Cloud Forum Snapshot

2026 is the largest in-person Cloud Forum attendance ever!

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Cloud Forum Stats

Since 2015

• 175 organizations
• 3 institutions have attended every Cloud Forum so far! (Indiana, Princeton, WashU)

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In 2026

• 57 organizations (17 new, 40 returning)
• 20 presenters and facilitators
• 296 years of collective Cloud Forum Experience
• 4 colleagues contributed time to help make CF26 even knowing they couldn’t attend

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Today’s Agenda

• Housekeeping
• A Welcome from Our Hosts
• 2026 Cloud Superhero
• 2026 State of the Cloud Survey Results
• Today’s Schedule

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Reminder: Join the #he-cloud-forum channel to take part in the event chatter

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A Welcome Form Our Hosts

Todd Shechter

Chief Technology Officer

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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A Welcome Form Our Hosts

Didier Contis

Vice Provost & CIO

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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2026 Internet2 Cloud Superhero Award

2022 Erik Lundberg

University of Washington

2024 Sarah Christen

Cornell University

2025 Jack Suess

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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2026 Cloud Superhero Award

• Co-founder of the EDUCAUSE Cloud Computing Constituent Group (CCCG), which grew from about a dozen cloud leaders to over 2200 community members today
• Member of the Internet2 Cloud Services Working Group, which merged with the Cloud Computing Constituent Group in 2014
• Co-author of the Preparing the IT Organization for the Cloud paper series as part of the ECAR-CLOUD Working Group in 2015-2016
• Current member of the Internet2 NET+ Program Advisory Group
• Previous member of the Cloud Scorecard Working Group, which helped design what is today the Internet2 Cloud Scorecard

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2026 Cloud Superhero Award

Tom Dugas

Vice President for Technology and Chief Information Officer,

Duquesne University

An early pioneer of cloud in higher education whose commitment to creating, nurturing and leading community has left a lasting legacy.

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2026 State of the Cloud Survey

Phil Fenstermacher – William & Mary

David Lacey – J Paul Getty Trust

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2026 State of Cloud Survey

David Lacey

Getty

Phil Fenstermacher

William & Mary

Responses

50 Responses from 49 Institutions

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What is your distribution of spend between cloud providers?

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Primary Cloud: Greater than 70% of spend with a single provider

• 52% of respondents (26 of 50). Down from 66% in 2025
• 18 AWS, 6 Azure, 2 Google, 0 Oracle

No Primary Cloud: No more than 60% of spend with any one provider

• 26% of respondents (13 of 50)

Tri-Cloud: Greater than 10% of spend in 3 clouds

• 22% of respondents (11 of 50)
• 74% (37 of 50) have some presence in in AWS, Azure, and Google - down from 90% in 2024, up from 58% in 2025

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What is your distribution of spend between cloud providers?

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Tri-Cloud: Greater than 10% of spend in 3 clouds

• 22% of respondents (11 of 50)
• 74% (37 of 50) have some presence in in AWS, Azure, and Google - down from 90% in 2024, up from 58% in 2025

Broad Multi-Cloud: Greater than 10% spend in all 4 clouds represented.

• 2 Institutions (4%)

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Other: One answer, but didn’t specify what it is.

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What is your distribution of spend between cloud providers?

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Motivators

1. Increase Agility (3.7)
2. Technology Innovation (4.26)
3. Operational Efficiency (4.40)
4. Add Flexibility (4.44)
5. Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity (5.44)
6. Regulatory/Compliance (5.92)
7. Remove Dependence on a Data Center (6.00)
8. Improve Support for Research (6.04)
9. Outsource Infrastructure (7.14)
10. Reduce Costs (7.66)

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Obstacles

1. Cost (4.10)
2. Lack of Skills (4.41)
3. Funding (4.43)
4. Staff Willingness (4.88)
5. Changing Business Model (5.18)
6. Platform Complexity (5.96)
7. Convincing leadership of the ROI (6.55)
8. Security (6.86)
9. Initial Investment Requirements (8.98)
10. Service Provider (8.02)
11. Disaster Recovery (8.63)

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Technology Trends in Testing

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1. Machine Learning Using Cloud Services
2. Generative AI
3. Data Lake in the Cloud
4. VDI in the Cloud
5. Cloud Security Posture Management
6. Continuous Integration/Deployment
7. Cloud Vendor Provided Serverless
8. Containers
9. Cloud Cost Management
10. Infrastructure as Code
11. Research Automation
12. Internet of Things Management

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Technology Trends in Production

1. Infrastructure as Code
2. Containers
3. Continuous Integration/Deployment
4. Cloud Vendor Provided Serverless
5. Generative AI
6. VDI in the Cloud
7. Data Lake in the Cloud
8. Cloud Security Posture Management
9. Cloud Cost Management
10. Machine Learning Using Cloud Services
11. Internet of Things Management
12. Research Automation

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Notable Technology Trends

• 12% Evaluated and Chose not to use Cloud Cost Management Tools
• 6% Evaluated and decided against research automation
• 70% Not using any Research Automation

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• Generative AI up in Production from 32% to 54%
• Testing down from 61% to 38%

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• CI/CD steady around 67% in production
• IaC and Containers steady around 80% in production

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Notable Comments

• Lots of folks comment on their strengths helping their institution do a lot with a skeleton team

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• Multiple institutions talk about their IaC Coverage
• Only ⅔ of survey folks are using IaC. There’s knowledge in the room to share

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Known Gaps

• We only ask about proportional spend. This causes issues when:
• A single use case creates huge spend (GPUs, Marketplace)
• Multiple requests for more HPC Coverage
• Multi-tenant CMMC in GovCloud

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• Multiple (!) institutions call out that we didn’t provide enough opportunity to tell us how awesome Bob Flynn is.

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Explore the Data On Your Own

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Aggregate data is available for exploring, slicing, and filtering on your own to find what might be meaningful to you.

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https://go.wm.edu/CF-SoC

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Today’s Schedule

9:45-12:30 Presentations with a few breaks

12:30 Lunch

13:30 - 14:15 Kubernetes Panel

14:15 Break

14:30-15:30 Presentations

15:45-17:00 Lightning Talks

18:00 Dinner in Tripp Center in the Memorial Union

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Dinner at the Tripp Commons in the Memorial Union

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Wednesday’s Schedule

9:00-12:30 Cloud Maturity Model Workshop with a few breaks

12:30 Lunch

13:30 - 14:15 Strategies for Cloud Billing Panel

14:15 Break

14:30-15:30 Presentations

15:45-17:15 Unconference

Dinner on your own

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Unconference – Submit your Topics through the start of lunch (12:30pm) Tuesday

https://tinyurl.com/cf26-topics

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Unconference – Vote for Topics through the end of break (14:30pm) Wednesday

https://tinyurl.com/cf26-vote

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