CEE Cloud Business Survey 2025

Across the region, companies are moving beyond early pilots and using cloud to reinvent older systems and support new products. Compared with 2023, twice as many companies in CEE now describe their cloud maturity as high, and far fewer describe it as low.

CEE organisations are now at a critical moment. They need to turn early gains into lasting advantages. This means embedding cloud more fully into their strategies, operations, and innovation agendas.

We gathered insights from 210 business and technology leaders across CEE and compared them with wider EMEA trends to learn how cloud integration into business processes has evolved. This report also includes country-level snapshots, revealing distinct challenges and strengths across the region

Cloud maturity has improved across the region, but unevenly. Between 2023 and 2025, the share of organisations reporting low cloud maturity fell from 52% to 31%, while the share reporting high maturity rose from 11% to 25%. 

Companies in Poland and the Czech Republic show steady progress. In Romania, organisations are also moving forward, although at a slower pace. When compared with EMEA as a whole, CEE still has fewer organisations in the middle of the maturity curve. 

Even with growing adoption, many teams say cloud isn’t yet fully delivering the outcomes they expected. They face obstacles both inside and outside their organisations. 

Companies in CEE most often face data security and compliance concerns, challenges integrating new and old systems, slow decision‑making, and budget constraints. Externally, data privacy and security, market shifts, geopolitical uncertainty play a role too.  

And each country faces a different mix. Czech organisations talk more about skills gaps. Romanian leaders point to integration complexity and tighter budgets. Polish respondents are more focused on data security. 

Across CEE, organisations are preparing for the next phase of their cloud journey. Most plan to increase their cloud budgets. Leaders want stronger security, sharper controls, better digital experiences and more modern platforms. And AI and machine learning are driving a lot of those decisions. 

AI is changing how leaders think about their cloud strategy. Half of CEE organisations strongly agree they’ve already increased cloud usage to support AI workloads. Also, half believe their people have the skills to make good use of AI. This shows the region’s progress in cloud and AI adoption. But there’s still work to do. Many companies need to strengthen their AI governance and improve how they put these skills into practice. 

Almost half now consider agentic AI capabilities when choosing cloud partners. One-third are also changing, or planning to change, their cloud infrastructure for AI enablement, including agentic AI.  

Agentic AI is on the agenda everywhere in CEE, but most organisations are still early in this journey. Regionally, adoption mirrors EMEA: 30% are scaling, 40% piloting, and 27% still exploring. The pace across CEE countries varies. Polish organisations are moving quickest. Czech companies are mostly testing and refining, while Romanian businesses are still exploring early ideas. But the overall direction across the region shows that cloud and AI are becoming connected decisions. 

Cloud transformation encompasses strategy, technology, people, and operations. That’s the space we work across every day.  

Our teams in CEE help organisations modernise older systems, build secure and flexible cloud foundations, and make practical use of data and AI. We’ve built strong relationships with the leading cloud providers and have access to the right expertise both locally and globally. 

If you’re thinking about your next step in cloud or AI, we can help you explore your options and prepare for what’s next.