Germany's Cloud Reliance Raises Outage Risks, Survey Finds

A Flexera State of the Cloud 2026 survey of more than 750 technology leaders shows hybrid‑cloud architectures dominate in Europe, with 73 % of firms combining public and private clouds and 88 % using a multicloud approach. Only 14 % rely exclusively on public‑cloud services.

Bitkom’s Cloud Report 2026, based on over 600 German companies, reveals that a cloud outage would cripple many businesses: 46 % said they would have to halt operations, and 9 % could not continue at all. Respondents estimate they could keep work running for an average of 78 hours (about three days) before a shutdown becomes inevitable. In the past year, 28 % experienced a major cloud failure. Most firms have contingency plans—82 % have emergency‑restart procedures, 75 % store critical data off‑cloud, and 68 % have contractual safeguards with providers.