A recent survey by IDG Enterprise found that enterprise adoption of cloud services is increasing and shows no plans to stop in the new year. More organizations than ever before are utilizing the cloud for at least one service and a growing amount of money is being put toward the acquisition of cloud technology and tools.

The 2014 Cloud Computing Survey, which included conversations with more than 1,600 IT and security decision-makers across a variety of industries, discovered that 69 percent of organizations have at least one application in the cloud, an increase of 12 percent from 2012. Another 18 percent plan to use cloud-based applications within the next year and 13 percent plan to do so within one to three years.

When asked what applications and services will move to the cloud over the next three years, 34 percent of respondents said collaboration and conferencing services. Another 43 percent of participant organizations have already moved such tools into the cloud.  Nearly half of participating organizations have moved their email and messaging services to the cloud, and 20 percent have already migrated their call and contact center operations.

More than half of those surveyed reported recently updating existing cloud services, or having plans to do so over the next year. When asked what drove participants to adopt the cloud and what factors would have to be considered for future cloud investments, 39 percent of respondents cited speed of deployment and lower cost of ownership. The need to replace legacy on-premises technology was cited by 35 percent of those surveyed as a driving factor, and one-third said the ability to enable business continuity was key for them.

Cloud services budgets experiencing growth
The study also revealed that overall cloud investments have increased 19 percent from two years ago, and an investment from an average company is $1.6 million. In 2015, 24 percent of overall IT budgets will be allocated solely toward cloud spending. The research also discovered something interesting about where enterprise spending for cloud services originates. According to the report, more than one-quarter of cloud spending will be from outside of the IT department within the next three years. However, 70 percent of CIOs and IT executives are still involved in the decisions to purchase cloud services, and the IT department regains ownership of 45 percent of cloud-related projects.

As decisions on tech spending, particularly those related to the cloud, begin to move away from the IT department and further into the C-suite, executives will play a bigger role in the technology and solutions being implemented in an enterprise. Increasingly, these players will be the ones who will have to be convinced about the benefits of specific services, as they are becoming the gatekeepers of the IT budget.