New evidence-based index helps CIOs, CFOs and technology leaders navigate changing cloud economics and make more informed workload decisions
Meridian Group International today announced the inaugural Enterprise Cloud Economics Index (ECEI), a new annual research initiative designed to help enterprise leaders better understand the economic, operational, and strategic forces influencing cloud strategy and workload placement.
The 2026 Enterprise Cloud Economics Index examines a cloud landscape that is becoming increasingly complex. Public cloud continues to expand, while private and hybrid infrastructure remain important parts of enterprise technology environments. At the same time, AI, resilience, sovereignty, operational complexity and the ability to change providers or architectures are adding new considerations to the economics of where and how workloads run.
Rather than attempt to identify a single “best” cloud model, the ECEI provides an evidence-based framework for considering a more practical enterprise question: What is the right operating model for a workload, given its business requirements and current circumstances?
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“The cloud conversation has often been framed around choosing between public, private or hybrid environments, but enterprise decisions are rarely that simple,” said Jeff Murray, CEO of Meridian Group International. “We created the Enterprise Cloud Economics Index to give CIOs, CFOs and other leaders a useful, evidence-based reference as they evaluate their own technology strategies. The goal is not to prescribe an answer. It is to help leadership teams understand what the evidence is telling them, challenge assumptions and ask better questions about the workloads that support their businesses.”
An Evidence-Based View of Enterprise Cloud Economics
ECEI draws from a locked panel of 20 independent and verifiable sources spanning market research, industry foundations, official statistics, competition authorities, regulation, cybersecurity research, infrastructure research and standards bodies.
The index uses a proprietary methodological framework to distinguish observed evidence, Meridian’s most likely interpretation, credible alternative interpretations, evidence strength and the resulting ECEI conclusion. ECEI is intended to make uncertainty visible rather than present individual statistics or market trends as definitive answers. Drawing on our framework, the ECEI assesses the combined evidence behind each market signal and develops an evidence-based conclusion about what it most likely means for enterprise decision-makers.
ECEI identifies eight market signals shaping enterprise cloud economics:
• Hybrid normalization
• Economics expansion
• Public-cloud growth and cost friction
• Workload placement reassessment
• Control, resilience and sovereignty
• Strategic optionality
• AI infrastructure economics
• Operational complexity
Designed to Be Used, Not Just Read
The ECEI is accompanied by an Enterprise Self-Assessment that allows organizations to evaluate their own practices across five dimensions: workload placement discipline, economic visibility and control, operational simplicity, enterprise control and resilience, and strategic optionality. The assessment provides a directional Enterprise Profile and can be used independently without Meridian involvement.
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