The International Data Corporation (IDC) multiclient study, CloudView 2016, shows that 58% of all organizations surveyed are embracing cloud, using public or private cloud for more than one or two small applications or workloads, up from 24% 14 months ago. The top drivers of cloud adoption are around improving resource utilization and staff productivity.

Despite the increase in organizations embracing and investing in the cloud, only five percent of respondents believe they have an "optimized" cloud strategy.

"Beyond adoption and maturity, a series of questions on 'why are' or 'why aren't' respondents moving more workloads to the cloud makes up a key part of the study," said Ben McGrath, Senior Research Analyst, SaaS and Business Models. "Improving staff productivity remains a key driver, but in comparison to previous years' studies, more respondents are identifying business-related metrics as a key driver of Cloud adoption, such as improved business agility and more support for business-related programs."

Key findings from the study include:

• Respondents expect to increase their cloud spending by approximately 44% over the next two years.
• Over 70% of heavy cloud users are thinking in terms of a "hybrid" cloud strategy. 
• Over 40% of heavy cloud users plan to spend money on open source and standards projects.

"When we look at the shift in IT spend over the next 24 months, we look at it in terms of customer site and provider site, and we see a strong desire to move applications and workloads off premises and have them managed by a cloud provider," said Robert Mahowald, Group Vice President, Applications and Cloud Business Models. "The study helps us identify how end-users are going about making these changes – what are the criteria for re-platforming, which specific applications are moving at what rate, and what are end-users looking for from their vendors?"

The IDC multiclient study, CloudView 2016, covers a wide range of questions around cloud, including: public and private cloud adoption and interest; IT spend on cloud and non-cloud workloads; pace of migration to the cloud by application type; and cloud maturity, including an IDC calculated view of maturity. The study had 6,159 respondents from 31 countries and was fielded in December 2015 and January 2016.

Read the full IDC Release including infographic.