Research conducted by Tata Communications has found that organisations with 500+ employees are seeing tangible benefits from cloud computing.

For the majority (85%) cloud has lived up to the industry hype, with 23% declaring that cloud has exceeded their expectations. The survey suggests that the positive opinion can be attributed to enterprises experiencing tangible benefits due to using cloud services.

The majority (83%) of respondents stated they had experienced benefits that they did not expect to see, with the most popular of these benefits being increased productivity 69%, better access to data 65%, and reductions in costs 63%.

It is predicted in the report that by 2024 off-premises storage will have overtaken on-premises alternatives, with enterprises forecast to have on average 58% of compute and data storage held in the cloud, compared with 28% currently.

When asked how much of the IT provision would be stored in private cloud specifically by 2024, the respondents predicted an average of 52%.

However the vast majority (94%) would rather adopt a hybrid cloud computing model if connections with the public cloud were more predictable.

Competitive advantages of using cloud deployments are being realised according to the research which shows that 65% of respondents said that using the cloud had led to increased speed of access to technology.

Other advantages such as streamlining business processes (67%) have experienced reduced delivery times while 54% have seen the delivery times of new services to new markets reduced.

Julie Woods-Moss, CMO and CEO of NextGen Business at Tata Communications, said: "This independent research shows that the cloud has exited the hype cycle and entered the real adoption phase for businesses globally.It is now a strategic investment and a competitive differentiator."

"As a result, the network that enables cloud adoption is critical, and new services, such as our IZO™ network platform and partner ecosystem, are fundamental to creating a simple way for companies to adopt the cloud model most suited to business requirements – be that private, public or hybrid."

The survey was conducted through an online questionnaire of 36 questions which was responded to by 1,000people across eight countries. All respondents were from organisations with 500+ employees from all industries.