The Maturing State of Infrastructure as Code in 2025

The evolution of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has been marked by a handful of major shifts in approach and technology, often with growing cloud complexity and inefficiency as the catalyst for change. And while most DevOps pros recognize and attempt to keep up with the changing landscape, they don’t always realize that its implications reach far beyond simple automation.

From its roots in manual scripting and configuration management, IaC has grown into a sophisticated ecosystem, one that’s reshaping how organizations manage their IT infrastructure altogether.

But not all cloud practitioners have enough of a grasp on IaC and best practices to make the most of it, leaving Infrastructure as Code still underutilized, and leaving uncodified cloud environments at risk.

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Where We’ve Come From: The Evolution of IaC

The progression from cloud-specific frameworks to declarative, multicloud solutions like Terraform represented the increasing sophistication of IaC capabilities. This shift enabled organizations to manage complex environments with never-before-seen efficiency. The emergence of programming language-based IaC tools like Pulumi then further blurred the lines between application development and infrastructure management, empowering developers to take a more active role in ops.

👁 Evolution of Iac from Config mgmt, to cloud-specific, to declarative multicloud, to programming language, to Kubernetes based, and now

For DevOps and platform engineering leaders, this evolution means preparing for a future where cloud infrastructure management becomes increasingly automated, intelligent and integrated with other aspects of the software development life cycle. It also highlights the importance of fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptation (ideally with a cloud center of excellence at its core), as the IaC landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

Here’s what the state of IaC looked like just a year ago — as well as a glimpse at how it’s already changed yet again.

365 Days of Change: What Did We Learn in 2024?

Firefly’s “State of Infrastructure as Code (IaC)” report is an annual pulse check on the rapidly evolving state of IaC adoption, maturity and impact. Over the course of the past few editions, this report has become an increasingly crucial resource for DevOps professionals, platform engineers and site reliability engineers (SREs) navigating the complexities of multicloud environments and a changing IaC tooling landscape.

In 2024, we surveyed 350+ respondents and used their collective feedback to create a report that helps benchmark, document and shape the future of IaC and cloud management strategies for the entire industry.

While the 2025 research insights won’t be publicly available until late April, here’s a recap of what we learned last year, and what the implications look like:

• Multicloud complexity hit new highs: Data shows that 80% of companies ran multicloud environments, with more than 50% managing three or more clouds. For many, this directly led to governance and cost management struggles.
• IaC adoption grew, but total IaC coverage remained elusive: 72% of organizations used IaC, yet only one-third codified more than 75% of their infrastructure, leaving many resources unmanaged. Often, these unmanaged resources were legacy assets.
• Terraform’s stronghold started to slip: In 2024, 60% of teams used Terraform, but OpenTofu and Pulumi were already gaining early traction, suggesting future shifts.
• Security and governance were key concerns: Last year, 45% of respondents cited security/compliance risk as a major IaC challenge, while 32% struggled with change management processes.
• DevOps pipelines and automation became standard: 2024 proved there remained gaps in automation when it comes to cloud infrastructure management, as 55% used CI/CD pipelines for IaC, but many still deployed Terraform manually (~30%).

The State of IaC in 2025: What’s New?

Last year, the “State of Infrastructure as Code” report revealed the struggles of scaling IaC in an increasingly complex, multicloud reality. But what has changed in 2025?

• Is multicloud still growing, or are companies starting to consolidate?
• What are the factors threatening Terraform’s dominance?
• Has the security panic around IaC governance faded — and if so, what new challenges replaced it?
• How are DevOps teams tackling the hidden risks of drift and infrastructure misalignment?
• And is AI in infrastructure automation just hype, or is it quietly reshaping how teams manage the cloud?

The 2025 report drops in April. Stay tuned for exclusive insights and trends shaping the future of infrastructure management. (Hint: You’ll learn how IaC is maturing, what kind of IaC execution challenges are trumping early adoption concerns, and how the role of automation-first pipelines is changing.)

In the meantime, if your IaC strategy is still falling short, watch Why Your IaC Strategy Still Sucks in 2025 for insights and tools to help your IaC efforts drive efficiency, consistency and reliability in your cloud infrastructure.