>Melanie Posey is a research director at 451 Research from S&P Global Energy Horizons. She leads the Cloud & Managed Services Transformation team and manages the Voice of the Enterprise cloud survey. Her current research focus is the impact of the cloud operating model on the IT industry, including the changing dynamics of enterprise IT, vendor and service provider strategies, and the ways cloud has evolved into a platform for digital innovation, transformation and implementation of emerging technologies. Melanie has a long history as a technology industry analyst. In 2016, she joined 451 Research (acquired by S&P Global in 2019), bringing experience in strategy analysis, forecasting and enterprise/consumer insight for the cloud, hosting, IT services and telecommunications markets. Throughout her career, Melanie has been a go-to commentator for the business and technology trade press and is a frequent speaker at industry and client events. She holds a master’s degree in international relations/international economics from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, a division of Johns Hopkins University, a master’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a bachelor’s degree in French from Amherst College.
Alternative hypervisors continue to gain momentum, but VMware's grip on the enterprise hypervisor market has proved resilient. However, coexistence — both virtual machines and containers — defines the virtualization landscape in 2026.
Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud, Hosting & Managed Services provides data and insights about cloud adoption and usage in enterprise IT environments, highlighting cloud’s evolution from emerging technology to IT operating model. Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud Native focuses on key dynamics and requirements driving the enterprise implementation and use of cloud-native technologies and methodologies.
The Virtualization 2026 survey examines the approaches to application packaging — specifically virtual machines (VMs) — as well as hypervisor vendor selection and satisfaction.
This online survey of approximately 789 respondents was conducted from May 5 through June 26, 2026. The margin of error for top-line statistics is +/- 4 points at the 95% confidence level. The main portion of the survey includes approximately 230 current hypervisor users.
Alternative hypervisors continue to gain momentum, but VMware's grip on the enterprise hypervisor market has proved resilient. However, coexistence — both virtual machines and containers — defines the virtualization landscape in 2026.
Crosstabs (Excel tables | Download link in sidebar to the right) – Crosstabs of complete worldwide and regional survey results datasets, including key metrics and segmentation.
Charts and Figures (PowerPoint charts | Navigate charts in sidebar to the left | Download link in sidebar to the right) – PowerPoint slide deck of complete top-line survey results in charts and figures.
As in previous years, survey responses indicate the balance of enterprise IT deployments shifting incrementally toward public cloud and other service provider environments, even as the influence of enterprise AI projects is increasingly reflected in workload deployment and venue preferences.
This special survey combines the resources of three separate Voice of the Enterprise surveys to provide a holistic view of workload and application placement and migration across various enterprise venues and IT environments, from in-house data centers to colocation and public cloud environments. VotE: Digital Pulse takes a high-level view of the technology decisions, products, and topics facing organizations. VotE: Cloud, Hosting & Managed Services focused on cloud adoption and usage in enterprise IT environments, highlighting the emergence of the cloud operating model. VotE: Data Centers focuses on the key dynamics driving the enterprise data center market.
The Special Workload Placement & Migration Combined Study 2026 combines the resources of these three surveys to examine the makeup of enterprise IT environments, organizational preferences for workload placement, the factors that determine those decisions, the migration and movement of workloads over time, and the rationale for the movement of workloads into and out of the cloud. It also looks specifically at the drivers surrounding the deployment of AI workloads and the operation of hybrid IT systems.
This online survey of approximately 761 respondents was conducted from March 3 through April 27, 2026. The margin of error for top-line statistics is +/- 4 points at the 95% confidence level.
AI demands shift enterprise IT priorities – Highlights from Digital Pulse, Cloud and Data Centers (Spotlight)
As in previous years, survey responses indicate the balance of enterprise IT deployments shifting incrementally toward public cloud and other service provider environments, even as the influence of enterprise AI projects is increasingly reflected in workload deployment and venue preferences.
Crosstabs (Excel tables | Download link in sidebar to the right) – Crosstabs of complete worldwide and regional survey results datasets, including key metrics and segmentation.
Charts and Figures (PowerPoint charts | Navigate charts in sidebar to the left | Download link in sidebar to the right) – PowerPoint slide deck of complete top-line survey results in charts and figures.
A small number of mostly US-headquartered companies now control the chips, clouds and AI models underpinning the global digital economy. That concentration is no longer just a market structure issue — it is a sovereignty problem. This report summarizes a broader S&P Global thought leadership report published earlier this year.
We are still in the early days when it comes to the cost impact of AI, and current spending seems to be a small fraction of what is to come. Analysts Jean Atelsek and Melanie Posey return to the podcast to discuss what they heard at the FinOps X conference with host Eric Hanselman.
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