The new age of cloud: responding to a shifting paradigm

Cloud has become the foundation of digital business, powering transformation, agentic AI, and resilience across industries. Yet the landscape is shifting. Geopolitical tensions, regulatory change, and cost pressures are redrawing the map of cloud adoption and governance. Organisations are no longer asking how to move to the cloud, but how to master it.

PwC’s EMEA Cloud Business Survey 2025, based on responses from over 1,400 business and technology leaders across 26 territories, reveals a decisive move from adoption to optimisation. Organisations are maturing rapidly, but face new complexity as they balance sovereignty, security, innovation, and financial discipline.

A similar trend can be observed in Luxembourg. Based on 41 responses from local organisations, the survey shows progress over the past two years: cloud is transitioning from a supporting IT platform to a true business accelerator. Cloud maturity is increasing, with 76% of Luxembourg organisations reporting at least medium maturity in 2025. A growing number have moved selected workloads to the cloud and are adapting their operating models to better leverage cloud capabilities, reflecting a clear commitment to advancing their cloud journey.

Surveyed organisations in Luxembourg view data privacy, security, and regulatory compliance as top challenges in realising cloud value. More than half highlight privacy and security, while 37% cite regulatory pressures as key barriers. Geopolitical tensions have also become an increasing concern in recent months. 

In response, 84% of organisations are refining their cloud strategies, adopting a “sovereignty-by-design” approach that keeps sensitive data under local control while ensuring compliance. Cloud providers are responding rapidly, developing solutions that generally fall into two categories: hyperscaler-driven sovereign offerings and local, country-specific initiatives. This dual approach allows organisations to operate securely in regulated environments while benefiting from scale, innovation, and interoperability.

Agentic AI is transforming the cloud from a platform for efficiency into a catalyst for autonomous business innovation. These systems make real-time decisions, orchestrate complex processes, and continuously learn, enabling faster innovation, cost savings, and new value creation.

Adoption in Luxembourg remains at an early stage, reflecting the broader EMEA trend: nearly one in three organisations has yet to begin implementing agentic AI, while 32% are currently piloting or testing. Although some organisations have started deploying agentic AI, most are still far from scaling, both in terms of the number of agents deployed and the complexity or scope of tasks they handle.

Realising this potential requires cloud architectures that handle large, dynamic data, support hybrid deployments, and ensure compliance and governance. When done right, agentic AI transforms cloud into a strategic engine for smarter decision-making, agility, and sustained competitive advantage.

Managing cloud costs remains a critical challenge as elasticity brings both flexibility and unpredictability. FinOps provides a structured approach, embedding financial accountability into cloud operations and enabling real-time decisions on usage, pricing, and optimisation to maximise business value. In Luxembourg, only 17% of organisations have adopted advanced FinOps practices, while roughly half are still planning or piloting them, underscoring gaps in financial governance. As AI workloads expand, effective cost management becomes increasingly strategic, not only to control spending, but also to ensure cloud investments drive innovation, scalability, and tangible business value.