Cloud Data Warehouse Usage Surges 116% as Industries Race to the Cloud
Domo analyzed its platform usage data aggregated across more than 4,500 customers in North America, Japan, and Europe/Middle East/Asia (EMEA) from March 2020 to March 2025 to understand how the cloud landscape has changed over the past five years. Domo’s unique visibility into data flow pipelines provides a deeper look at how much data is originating from Cloud Data Warehouses (CDWs) today. The research looked at total Domo card views (data visualizations rendered for end users in desktop, mobile apps, embedded analytics and scheduled emails) and identified how many sourced data from one of six of the largest CDW providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Databricks, Google Big Query, Oracle and Snowflake. The percentage of card views sourced from CDW data was below 16% in March 2020 but has now climbed to over 33% as of March 2025, marking a 116% increase in CDW usage and illustrating a dramatic shift in how businesses manage their most valuable asset: data. The below analysis breaks down trends across global regions and industries to better understand the nuances of this shift.
By Industry: Media Devours CDW Data
Looking at some of the largest industries, media companies appear to have huge adoption of CDWs. That industry was bottom of the pack at the beginning of the decade but with nearly two thirds (57%) of card views now sourced from a CDW, they lead in cloud data usage with an increase of over 500% from 5 years ago.
“Media companies’ extraordinary surge points to their unique digital transformation in the last five years,” said Ben Schein, Domo’s head of data curiosity and SVP of product. “Traditional media faced a perfect storm: increasingly global audiences requiring strict data sovereignty compliance across borders, legacy systems that left the majority of companies struggling to modernize, and an explosion of data from streaming platforms, mobile apps, and smart TVs creating highly variable workloads. The industry’s dramatic pivot to cloud is about storage and competitive survival. In a world where audience preferences shift in real-time, media companies recognized that instant access to analytics is the difference between leading cultural conversations and becoming yesterday’s news. Other industries like financial services may be lagging because regulatory requirements have locked them into legacy systems which make it hard to upend infrastructure and established processes. But, as AI becomes more integrated into businesses, those who shy away from a streamlined and agile data strategy may find themselves struggling to keep up as competition mounts.”
Domo’s data shows, high tech and manufacturing now source over 30% of card views from CDW data. Financial services, retail and professional services are growing but are still below that 30% mark. The below chart breaks down the growth and percent change for each of these major industries.
By Region: EMEA Leads in Cloud Adoption
The EMEA region has solidified its spot as the leader after doubling its dependence on CDW data since the start of 2020. North America and Japan were already behind EMEA at the start of the pandemic but have increased their reliance on CDW data by more than 125% in the last five years—though they still trail their EMEA counterparts.
“The surge in cloud data warehouse usage across EMEA may be more strategic than coincidental,” Schein says. “European organizations in particular face unique data sovereignty requirements that cloud infrastructure addresses. The regulatory landscape, particularly GDPR, has accelerated cloud adoption by driving businesses toward platforms with built-in compliance capabilities. Many EMEA organizations cite regulatory compliance as their primary challenge and the advanced security features offered by today’s cloud providers aren’t just nice-to-have. Organizations must reimagine how they approach data governance in the AI era.”
For the $1 trillion cloud computing industry, these numbers signal an encouraging trend. With adoption growing across industries and global regions, CDW vendors are seeing validation of their strategy to expand beyond traditional tech-forward sectors. “The data shows organizations of all types are embracing cloud-first data strategies,” Schein says. “With AI becoming a core business priority, we’re at a tipping point where cloud data and data products are becoming essential infrastructure for the AI era.”
The implications reach far beyond IT departments. Companies are now grappling with new challenges: finding cloud-savvy talent, retraining existing staff, and rethinking their entire approach to data strategy. This push toward centralized cloud data is also accelerating AI initiatives, as organizations seek to leverage their cloud-based data assets for machine learning and predictive analytics. With this research showing that some industries are populating more than half of their business insights (card views) with CDW data, the question is no longer if, but when, cloud will become the default choice for enterprise data.
As businesses race to keep pace with this digital transformation, one thing is clear: cloud data warehouses are becoming an increasingly standard part of modern business infrastructure. As adoption continues to grow across industries and regions, organizations are finding new ways to leverage these platforms to drive value and innovation.